■:■■'■ ■ 



.-. 



CHARLES LAMB. 



BY 



THOMAS CRADDOCK. 



1 
; 

' - s » O O Q 



LONDON : 

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., 4, STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 

LIVERPOOL : 

JAMES WOOLLARD, 54, CASTLE STREET. 

1867. 



- a 7 









LIVERPOOL : 
WILLIAM DAWBARN & CO. (PRIVATE PRINTING OFFICE.) 



/ 



3 



PREFACE. 



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We have probably now received all that is 
material towards forming a judgment on the 
life and character of Charles Lamb. We may 
continue to obtain short anecdotes and remin- 
scences from some of his old companions, 
'ho are still alive ; but, when we consider, 
that the youngest of these companions are 
now old men, we can hardly expect that any 
really new impress will be given to the im- 
pression of his life and character, already 
formed. He has been dead more than thirty 
years, and such a period commonly exhausts 
all that is valuable in the recollections of the 
associates of an important man, and all that 
is worth publishing of his remains. We are 
often supplied, immediately on the death of a 



IV. 



favorite author or statesman, with all that 
industrious admirers can scrape together. 
Reminiscences, Letters, Journals, Diaries are 
sometimes expanded over a dozen volumes, so 
that it becomes a task to read, and a task to 
digest what you have read. This, however, 
is not the case with Lamb. He wrote little, 
and what he did write was published before 
his death. He was too humble to practice 
the vanity, which is always more or less 
present in Diary writers. He never kept 
letters or manuscripts that fell into his hands. 
Thus, in his case, there was little material for 
the biographer, except what he could collect 
of Lamb's letters from his various corres- 
pondents. But he had a host of admirers, 
who have, in a variety of forms, published 
their opinions and recollections of him; and 
these opinions and recollections, together with 
his letters, are the material out of which we 
are enabled to form our estimate of the man. 



V. 

The first of these in importance is Talfourd's 
life and letters of his friend, which were pub- 
lished in two divisions ; the first, two years 
after Lamb's death; and the second, seven 
years after the first. But this work is clumsy 
in its construction, since it goes twice over the 
same ground, corrects in the second portion 
what it mis-stated in the first, gives us muti- 
lations of the correspondence ; and altogether 
dissatisfies a reader, who wishes to see the 
man as he was, not as his biographer thinks 
he ought to be. Still this is the book whence 
we must always seek the most authentic 
image of Lamb. When the mutilated letters 
are restored, we shall not need much to com- 
plete our ideas of their author from them 
alone. The next writer who has given us 
the clearest notion of Lamb is Patmore, In 
his "My Friends and Acquaintance," he 
enters on many important details ; and, as 
is his wont, gives an elaborate description of 



VI. 



peculiarities and habits. Cyrus Redding, in 
his Past Celebrities ; Procter, in his brief 
life of Lamb ; W. C. Hazlitt, in his life of 
his grandfather, William Hazlitt ; Thornton 
Hunt, in his Letters of Leigh Hunt ; Alsop, 
in his Letters and Conversations of Coleridge ; 
besides casual papers in various Reviews and 
Magazines, form the remaining material for 
the life of Lamb. Thus, merely from the 
broken nature of these materials, the writer 
of the following pages conceived that a work,- 
which should be in some measure dependent 
on all that had been published for its facts, 
would not be unacceptable to the general 
reader. He has, therefore, endeavored to 
separate the grain from the chaff, and to give 
a continuous narrative, embracing the literary 
as well as the domestic life of the man. 

However, the following work would 
never probably have been published but for 
one circumstance. 4 Mine own familiar friend, 5 



VII. 



Win Dawbarn, Esq., of Elmswood, near 
Liverpool, found it necessary, in the develop- 
ment of an extensive mercantile business at 
Liverpool, to establish a private Printing 
Office on his premises. Mr. Dawbarn used 
his Press, during leisure intervals, for printing 
lectures on Government, Conduct, and Exam- 
ple ; which he had delivered several years ago. 
When this work was finished, he offered the 
Press to me, and I accepted the boon. I 
have, therefore, to thank Mr. Dawbarn for 
hazarding a publication, which I should never 
have been sanguine enough to hazard myself. 

Liverpool, December, 1867. 



CHARLES LAMB. 

The period comprised between 1800 and 1830 is one of 
the great eras of English Literature. It may compete 
with the other two great eras of Elizabeth and Anne 
without any allowance or drawback, for it is distinguished 
by some works which are likely to last as long as some of 
the greater writings in either of the preceding periods. The 
rapidity with which its strength grew, its sudden maturity 
and hasty decline, are in all respects similar to either of the 
former eras. The great Pericles era of Greece, the Horace 
era of Rome, the Moliere era. of Erance, the Cervantes era 
of Spain, the Goethe era of Germany, the Dante era of 
Italy, and the Shakspere era of England, have ail of them 
common features. They were all rapid of growth and of 
decay. They were all comprised in a period not greater 
than a single life-time. They were all marked by a com- 
prehensiveness as well as a splendour of ability. They all 
so astonished and delighted mankind that they left suc- 
ceeding generations little else than to read their writings, 
to imitate them, and comment on them. It would be an 
interesting inquiry, even if it promised no reward, to trace 
how it is that genius comes in societies ; — that it is not so 
much a comet, astonishing now and then, as a fall of 
meteors, belonging to periods and companionships \ that it 
is essentially a social — not a solitary quality ; that it 
strikes out its scintillations as it were by contact • that it 

B 



cannot endure long exposure ; but like the aloe, when it has 
blossomed once, sleeps a hundred years before it gathers 
strength sufficient for another specimen of its splendour. 

Herodotus, Thucyclides, Sophocles, Euripides, .ZEschy- 
lus, Phidias, Pericles, were all alive together. In like 
manner Horace, Livy, Virgil, and Martial were con- 
temporaries. Cervantes, Lope, Mariana, Calderon, 
Murillo, Velasquez make up the Spanish group ; and Kant, 
Lessing, Jean Paul, Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, Heyne are 
the great German contemporaries. The great Italian 
cluster is that of Machiavelli, Ariosto, Titian, Raffelle, 
Michael Angelo, Bramante, which, though not the same 
names as Byron instances, might, as he boldly says, have 
furnished forth creation. If then we estimate what a loss 
literature and human nature would suffer, if any one of 
these life-long clusters of intellects were to be taken from 
us, we may estimate the primary importance of particular 
short periods, in intellectual history, over the long intervals, 
which, like star points in the heavens, carry the eye 
along from constellation to constellation. Sometimes 
these ganglions, as we may name them, of the intellectual 
nerve, are distinguished by some particular kind of genius, 
as that of our Shakspere era, during which dramatic art, 
to the exclusion of almost every other, prevailed. The 
German era bore a more distributive character. Nothing 
predominated \ but Dramatic, Fictive, Philosophic genius 
had all their separate representatives in Schiller, Jean 
Paul, and Kant, as well as their great general representa- 
tive in Goethe. In Italy the Architect and the Painter- 
bore away the greater distinctions, 



But these periods, so brief and so conspicuous, are 
almost our only sources of intellectual property. They 
are succeeded by long interregna of busy feebleness and 
industrious obscurity. The periods of originality and 
greatness fall like a tropic sun into night without twilight ; 
and the interval, that establishes nothing, is often the 
interval that pretends to every thing. It never knows, 
and consequently never confesses its worthlessness. It is 
only by tracing the bright that we detect the obscure, and 
know that dreariness ever had existence. When greatness 
has ceased, it has generally done all that can be done with 
the particular form of knowledge it has adopted. When 
the world has obtained a Prometheus, or the Georgics, 
or a Don Quixote, or a Faust, or a Tartuffe, or the Trans- 
figuration, it is satisfied. Intellect may strain, but it is 
the frog straining against the ox. There is exhaustion in 
a masterpiece. And though we can perceive no reason 
that the production of Othello or Twelfth Night should act 
as weariness on Dryden and Shadwell, yet the effect is the 
vsame as if they had worn themselves down, and had only 
the residue of intellect to work with. The stilted efforts 
of the inferior are as the exhaustion and weariness of the 
superior. When Dryden left the path of Shakspere, he 
became a terror and a power. But while he ranted on 
the stage, he was " dry as the remainder biscuit after a 
voyage. " 

While then the periods of genius glow with special, 
and often with rival brilliancies, the intervals between 
them are occupied with a succession of imitators and 
disciples, who, wanting the original ability, and perhaps 



opportunities, of their masters, make, for a time, the 
greater works, that preceded them, stale and neglected from 
their hacknied use of them \ from the base and unworthy 
imitations which they make of them ; from the cold 
methodical, and prolix trifles, which, as it were, spring out 
of the fiery, original, and terse masterpieces of genius. 
This result of the popularity of genius is so general, that 
we may be sure it is not an accident, but a law, and it 
seems to have the effect of fallowing the soil of thought, 
and preparing it for another crop. The weeds that spread 
over the surface of the recent harvest field are the means 
of their destruction. They exhaust themselves in uncul- 
tured growth, and are ploughed up to be destroyed before 
new seed begins to show itself. 

If it were necessary to adduce instances of what has 
been said, we might do so from any literature that was 
worthy of the name. The fragmentary remains of the 
secondary literature of Greece and Rome afford evidence 
of this fact, although the greater part of this secondary 
literature has perished from neglect. But among our 
own writers, the proof of works of this kind is abundant 
enough. The last seventy years of the eighteenth century 
are full of it. Only about half a dozen writers and 
thinkers of first-rate character occur during that long 
period of literary dulness, and their works were really little 
more than skilful imitations of predecessors. Nobody would 
dare compare the Rambler with the Spectator, or the 
Traveller with the Rape of the Lock, or Humphrey Clinker 
with Gulliver's Travels, or Sir Charles Grandison with 
Robinson Crusoe; though indeed the novel in the hands of 



Fielding, history in the hands of Gibbon, and Philosophy 
in the hands of Hume belong to the first classes of their 
kinds. But the current literature of the era was miserable 
in the extreme. ]STo such weak washy beverage was ever 
produced before, or has been since. The Delia Cruscans 
finished the period appropriately enough, and by their 
strained, artificial namby-pamby, served to bring about that 
brilliant literary revolution, which prevailed during the 
first thirty years of this century. 

More than one theory has been proposed to account 
for the difference which we perceive in the poetry of Scott, 
Coleridge, and Wordsworth from that of Mrs Robinson, 
Charlotte Smith, Whitehead, Hayley, Miss Seward, 
Great-head. These were popular writers at the end of 
the last century. They threw off volume after volume of 
verses, which were eagerly read and admired. Yet their 
productions are chiefly marked by insipid compliments, 
fiimsy images, dull, stilted narrative, sentimental cox- 
combry, and, in general, by that kind of style which is 
the result, not of a natural impulse to speak, because 
nature has given the thoughts and the expression, but an 
ambition to speak, because former speakers have attained 
reputation and reward by that means. It was a morbid 
desire to be distinguished and original, without the 
necessary qualification for either. The Ode, the Elegy, 
the Sonnet were the favorite vehicles of the super-senti- 
mentalists, who drew a large part of their inspiration 
from such subjects as loving blackbirds, deaths, births, 
and marriages, and old maidish prudery. Lines to Chloe 
on her marriage, and to Phillis on the death of her Linnet, 



were the subjects that took place of the Ode to Eton 
College and the Hermit. 

It has been often asserted, and generally believed, 
that the revolution which changed poetical taste from 
the style of Miss Seward to that of Wordsworth, was 
effected by the Percy ballads, which were first published 
in a collected form in 1765. Chevy Chase and Clym of 
the Clough are certainly very different productions from 
the Monody on Major Andre, or an Ode to Chloe. But it 
may very reasonably be doubted whether, after all, so 
much was owing to the Percy volume as has been attri- 
buted to it. The Percy productions were the natural 
productions of poets, surrounded with circumstances very 
different from those which surrounded Mrs. Robinson and 
the Delia Cruscans, as they were called. That which we 
call nature in the Percy collection, was merely that 
peculiarity which results from the writer observing and 
putting down, without any anxiety about excellence or 
inferiority, what he sees, hears, and thinks. Now we are 
pretty sure that the Delia Cruscans did the same, after 
their fashion. But while the Delia Cruscans had been 
bred in the surroundings of artificial society, false senti- 
ment, suppressed opinions, and made-up feelings, they 
gave expression to these uninteresting products of their 
education. They had no genius to soar above their age, 
nor had the writers of the Percy ballads. But while the 
Percy ballads had soared out of the age in which they 
had fallen, by the mere natural operation of time, the 
Delia Cruscans were as trivial, as foolish, as pert, as 
ridiculous as the words and sentiments of any fop or 



school-miss you could meet -with at the time. "We do not 
encourage this kind of representation of artificial society ; ' 
because, though we follow it in real life, we, at the same 
time, are conscious of its silliness, and we are by no means 
anxious to have our folly preserved in amber. Make us 
better than we are if you please, but do not give us our 
likeness in our own false sickliness. The insipidity of 
reality can only be made palatable by time. If Delia 
Cruscans had lived in the age of Henry the Third, they 
would have been studied and annotated. As they lived 
in the age of George the Third, they were rightly served 
by their successors, in being scorned and trampled on. 

When, therefore, we attribute to the Percy volume 
all the merit of the poetical revolution, at the head of 
which Wordsworth stood, we ought to remember that 
Cowper had lived and written without its inspiration ; 
that Rogers had published the Pleasures of Memory, and 
Crabbe his early poems, without any reliance upon it. 
Yet these writers show as much difference from the 
extravagant taste of their century, as Southey or Coleridge ; 
and Cowper has never been moved an inch from his high 
position by all the various poetry of the early third of the 
nineteenth century. Crabbe, Rogers, Wordsworth, Scott, 
Southey, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore, 
Campbell, James Montgomery are the great poetical con- 
stellation of this remarkable period. In the first period 
of intellectual power, the drama had left nothing in its 
vicinity that dare compete with it. In the second, the 
poetry of life and observation prevailed, out of which grew 
the interregnum poetry of false sentiment and strained 



compliment. In this third period, neither drama nor 
moral poetry had any chance, but narrative was the 
general subject from first to last of all. Yet of all these 
twelve poets no two can be grouped so closely together as 
Dryden and Pope, or Thomson and Cowper. Those who 
seem to have been influenced by the study of older and 
simpler literature are Wordsworth and Coleridge. If it 
is necessary to refer the inspiration of the others to any 
sources, it must be referred to some quite independent of 
the Percy ballads. Even Scott probably owed little of 
the direction of his genius to Chevy Chase. His mind 
was made up before he had received much influence from 
older ballads. Nature had prepared him for his work; 
and had there never existed a heroic ballad or a story of 
chivalry, — a minstrel or a Troubadour, he would, out of 
his own nature, have invented them, and we should pro- 
bably have had the Lay and Marmion little different from 
the state in which they now exist. The tendency towards 
narrative and romance, which then set in, has gone on 
thickening to the present day. The great masters forming 
the group gave it every variety of expression. That 
which we are now burdened with, in the shape of novels 
and tales, sensation extravagancies, and overdrawn 
character, and unlikelihood of situation, are the mere 
spume and yeast from that great up-turn of intellect, 
which marked the first thirty years of the present century. 
We have nothing now that did not spring up then 
stronger and healthier. Perhaps Dickens is the only man 
of pure genius who has relied on himself that does not 
belong to it. Tennyson, of whom such extravagancies 



have been said, is but an indifferent compound of Shelley, 
Keats, and Wordsworth. Had these poets never written 
Tennyson would never have been a poet. 

Though Poetry held the first place, and gave its dis- 
tinguishing feature to this culmination of intellect, and 
was the power that transmitted its authority most directly 
into our future, it was accompanied by literary com- 
panions, well worthy of its excellence. The Novel, the 
Essay, History, Biography, and Science had all their high 
cultivators, and it is from this second division of the 
group that we propose to select an illustration of the 
originality and cultivation, as well as the thoroughness 
and ease of its great leaders, Indeed, the best prose of 
the vaunted prose of the age of Anne is not a whit more 
cultivated than the best prose of Lamb, Jeffrey, Gifford, 
Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. While in variety, nature, 
freedom, and unconsciousness, if we may say so, the palm 
belongs to the modern group. Swift, Defoe, Addison, 
have features that are incomparable; but so have 
the writers we have named ; and we will proceed in our 
illustration of one of these, not as a specimen of the whole, 
but as specimen of a feature in genius, of which neither 
our literature nor any other European literature affords a 
parallel example. 

In Eeb. 1775, the year in which the war of Indepen- 
dence in America commenced, Charles Lamb was born, in 
Crown Office Row, Middle. Temple. His father was the 
factotum of Mr. Salt, a bencher. He is described as 
Scrivener in the entry of his son as scholar of Christ's 
Hospital, so that his first services were doubtless those of 



10 

clerk, which, according to his son, became enlarged into 
"dresser, friend, flapper, guide, stop-watch, auditor, 
treasurer." Charles was the youngest of three children, 
and though we soon lose sight of John Lamb, the eldest 
of the family, Mary Lamb is inseparably connected with 
her younger brother, and is one of the most fortunate of 
unfortunate characters, of whom we ever have read. 
When only seven years old, Charles was presented to the 
school of Christ's Hospital, where, among other com- 
panions, who afterwards grew celebrated, he became 
known to Coleridge, for their school intercourse seems 
hardly to have been friendship. Nervous, sensitive, 
delicate, retiring, he was ill-formed to rough it through a 
public school, had he not combined with these qualities, 
which often invite bullyism, a kindness and want of 
resentment, which even disarmed boy-tyranny, generally 
the most heartless and beast-like of all tyranny. Here 
Lamb showed a decided leaning towards classical learning. 
He read with a will, and easily mastered the uneasiness of 
learning, as old Lily calls it. Had he been so minded, or 
had nature been generous enough, he might have secured 
an exhibition, and have entered the church. But whether 
Lamb would ever have relished that profession is doubtful. 
He had, however, a stammering speech, he could only 
raise difficult vocables by a strong effort, so that a 
profession, in which he would have been obliged to do 
three parts of his duty in public, was out of the 
question. After a sojourn of seven years in Christ's 
Hospital, Lamb quitted it. His brother had obtained 
a situation in the South Sea House — that old co-partner- 



11 

ship of bubble renown, which, still wore its uniform 
of clerks, and kept up the show of mercantile importance. 
The desk seemed best adapted to the capabilities of 
Charles, and under his brother, in the old South Sea 
House, he wore away three years subsequent to his leaving 
Christ's Hospital. This may be considered his mercantile 
apprenticeship. Here he learnt the difference between 
the account book and the Tutor's Assistant, between 
entries of realities and entries of the schoolmasters' 
invention. And no novel is more averse from the racking 
action of real life, than the simulated knowledge of the 
ciphering book from the real knowledge of the ledger. 
At the end of three years, in 1792, when the French 
revolution was in full swing, and Robespierre was 
triumphant, Charles obtained an appointment in the India 
House, which henceforth became his permanent and only 
employment, except that literary labor, which has left us 
a rich, if not an abundant treasure. 

A clerkship in the India House, prolonged through 
thirty of the most vigorous years of life, would not seem 
to be a very likely means of enriching the mind and 
cultivating genius. The dry registration of chests of tea, 
and checking and countercheck! rig consignments of rice 
and indigo from the east to the west, are anything but 
poetical in their aspect. But it is surprising how closely 
the poetry and prose of life are connected. What a slight 
change will convert the most passionless transaction into 
a lawsuit, and what a little difference there is between the 
inspiration of a speculator, which leads him to try the 
humour of fortune on her most tender jealousies, and the 



12 

inspiration of a poet, which often aggravates the same 
fickle gender by the same kind of insubstantial trusts. 
Amid the dull routine of compound additions and subtrac- 
tions, of reel ink and black ink entries, Charles Lamb 
managed to store his mind with favorite scraps of 
knowledge, which raised longings and visions, such as 
ripen at last to works of passion, and reflection, and 
invention. 

He had, as we have said, formed at Christ's Hospital 
a half friendship with Coleridge. This half friendship 
ripened, after he left school, into one of the most perfect 
and unvarying of mutual reliances. Now there was a 
vast difference between Coleridge and Lamb. The brain 
of Coleridge was a fiery furnace, into which everything 
that entered was changed and etherialized. The brain of 
Lamb was merely a forge, which heated and made 
malleable and more shapable, that which before had shape 
and tenacity. Lamb never strove to resolve into vapour 
and elements the hard realities that surrounded him, or 
to gather up the floating fumes of speculation into solidity. 
Coleridge was constantly at this task. He was striving 
to pass into the fixed and consolidated streams of electrical 
light, or to dissolve the body he trod on into intangible 
gas. He never seemed to have his foot upon the solid 
earth. He was always making the present the mere 
spoke of a ladder to reach some visionary future. Lamb 
had accepted the vvorld as he found it. He, from the first, 
had never entertained any mean opinion of mankind, and 
was content to confide in them. Coleridge, from the first, 
had formed a false or rather an undue estimate of man. 



13 

He conceived that the power of improving the componnd 
of vice, folly, crime, high-mindedness, cunning, frankness, 
deceit, baseness, ambition, and the other endless catalogue 
of distinctions, which are constantly varying him, like 
rags in a Kaleidiscope, was a task not only to be attempted, 
but was very likely to meet with some success. "While, 
therefore, Lamb, in his closer alliance with the world, 
demanded less of it, and obtained more from it, Coleridge, 
in his dreamy speculations, could never find ease in 
things as they are, but was constantly turning from 
dream to dream, and securing nothing. His beginning 
was as his end ; but this is not an uncommon event with 
such speculators. The nothing they secure is to them more 
valuable than the ignoble fruit of efforts in closer con- 
nection with the earth. Heaven is their throne, the 
earth but their footstool. Coleridge was one of the purest 
and noblest of the race. When he had reached a consola- 
tory idea it was more to him than meat and drink. 
The world as it went was to him a workshop filled with raw 
material which needed only the skill of the perfect artist 
to convert it into brilliant texture and noble embellishment. 
He only asked to be permitted to dream, and to relate 
his dreams. A hearer who would hearken with reverence, 
and humour his wordiness, was to hirn the perfection of 
a companion. Wnenever the vapour accumulated, a 
consenting listener was necessary to give it vent. Such a 
listener was Lamb. 

In the meantime the old schoolfellows only met 
occasionally. Coleridge had proceeded from Christ's 
Hospital to Cambridge, but spent his vacations in London, 



14 

and these were now the seasons when the friends came 
together, and expatiated on the fitness of things. Coleridge, 
still all alive with his ideal world, which the chaff and 
contact of such matter of fact beings as university students 
had never succeeded in weakening, found Lamb always 
ready to listen and yield to his speculative visions. 
There was at that time, in the neighbourhood of Smith- 
field, a little public called the Salutation and Cat. This 
humble ale-house was to Coleridge and Lamb what the 
Cheshire cheese and Rainbow had been to Goldy and 
Johnson. Here Coleridge talked, and Lamb listened. 
As often happens, the two intellects found in the wideness 
of the distance between their inclinations and expectations 
the most unbounded pleasure in each other. Had Lamb 
been as fierce a dreamer as Coleridge, sympathy would 
have clashed, and opposition would probably have taken 
place of mutual admiration. They often supped together 
during their prolonged meetings, and egg-hot, Welsh 
rabbit, and Orinocoo are especially mentioned as the 
animal parts of these idealisms. When these appeared, 
Coleridge might refine, but Lamb was by no means 
inclined to put the regeneration of society in competition 
with substantialities. We fear he was never enough of 
a philosopher to consider the fumes of Orinocoo a less 
satisfactory influence than the fumes of metaphysics. 
But nothing material could at this time check the current 
of Coleridge. He seized on all the attenuations of thought 
and theory, with which philosophers of the mind had been 
chasing each other in circles for centuries, with the 
assurance that something substantial and real, after all, 



15 

was to be extracted from them. We may learn a little of 
the condition of Coleridge's mind at this period by noting 
its wanderings. He had started as an Anglican. But, in 
turning over the Athanasian mysteries in his mind, he 
found difficulties thicken around him. Those mysteries, 
which became afterwards to him the very evidencies of 
truth and divinity, were, at this immature stage of his con- 
victions, inventions of mortal weakness. He had already 
flown from their confusion to Unitarianism, from free- 
will to necessity, and he rushed into this new domain, mad 
to extract proofs from figures, illustrations, reasons, and 
rambling excursions over the whole field of his young 
acquirements. Priestley had become his philosopher, 
Belsham his priest ; and with notions bolder, fuller, and 
more comprehensive than the system he was backing, 
Coleridge held it up as the only ground on which a 
satisfactory footprint could be impressed. This brilliant 
vapour was delightful to Lamb. He sat and listened to 
the expositions of his companion with not a word of 
denial or approval. He was indifferent whether the logic 
was right or the premises sound, whether he apprehended 
a reality or a delusion, when he gave another pull at the 
egg-hot and refilled his pipe. While Coleridge was 
drawing some nice distinction that resolved apparent free 
agency into the necessary, he only felt the presence of a 
mind that could grapple with great subjects; and he 
was proud to get a glimpse, in an easy familiar way, into 
that vast limbo of human mistakes, to which he never had 
the wish to add, on his own part, a single word of error. 
But "fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," were not 



16 

the only subjects which entertained these young celebrities. 
Poetry and Logic, the invisible and the visible, the hot 
and the cold, were bound up together in the brain of 
Coleridge in such a manner that their contradictions never 
contradicted. They always maintained their integrity. 
Coleridge could use the wildest forms of imagination to 
coop and subdue the links of reason with a stronger chain. 
His soarings seemed often to make the outline of his vast 
notions clearer. He mapped his world as often from a 
balloon as from the sequence of angles and sines. When 
he was on the earth, his aspirations were above it ; when 
he was above it, he was constantly looking below. This 
uncommon mingling of the exact with the notional, 
dimension with infinity, gave much, if not all that was 
peculiar to the philosophy of Coleridge. It extended his 
power over the two great territories of thought, and 
enabled him to collect riches from each. He has shown, 
by his example, that metaphysics and poetry united may 
be better than metaphysics alone for securing definition 
in obscurity, and collecting pure honey on the wing, 
rather than by extracting an adulterated compound of 
it from crushed fibre. 

Lamb could appreciate the poetry of Coleridge better 
than the metaphysics. When necessity and free-will 
began to make Lamb nod, he was easily recalled to sensi- 
bility by a challenge to stand by some poetical innovation. 
The sentimental drawl school was an abomination to both. 
The simple taste of Lamb led him to go so close to nature 
as almost to become common place. The enthusiastic 
disposition of Coleridge led him to adorn and embellish, 



17 

so that of all the Writers who sprang up almost spon- 
taneously at this time, and who recognised a severe study 
of nature, as their fundamental principle, Coleridge deals 
with the most adventurous ideas. And here, in the little 
parlour of the Salutation and the Cat, over the savory 
fumes of beef-steak, and Welsh rabbit, and egg-hot, dis- 
cussion, and criticism, and theory gave birth to thoughts 
which ripened into the . Ancient Mariner, and Gineveve, 
and Elia. Lamb afterwards confesses, when his friend was 
parted from him, and the cold vehicle of correspondence 
was substituted for the warm pleasure of face to face 
intercourse, that, while they "sat together through the 
winter night beguiling the cares of life with poesy," 
Coleridge "first kindled in him, if not the power, yet the 
love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness." But these 
tempting enjoyments could not last. That great world 
which they were both eager to do homage to, one by 
studying it, the other by serving it, drew Coleridge 
from London, and Lamb was left to the common staple of 
clerks, with whom he was commercially connected. This 
was a severe change, and he felt it severely. He 
endeavoured to lighten it by writing; and his earliest 
preserved correspondence are the letters written to 
Coleridge at this period. Lamb was then twenty-one years 
old, and Coleridge a married man of twenty-four. Out of 
these letters we are able to extract morsels of the mind and 
feelings of Lamb at this early age. Sometimes they are des- 
pondent — a very common turn in young men, whose abilities 
are better than the generality of those who are naturally 
their companions. They find insipidity where they need 

c 



18 

sympathy, and turn reproachfully against the world because 
they do not find the intellects around them as good as their 
own. It is the average, and perhaps the low intellect, 
that riots, in its narrow limits, and enjoys the world. 
And this is proper enough. Such constitute nine-tenths 
of the whole fabric of society. Now the world is main- 
tained by its greater, not by its smaller groups. It 
therefore is diligent and incessant in looking after those 
who support it. It collects amusement from all quarters 
for them. It studies their humours, flatters their weak- 
ness, supplies them with food for every change of appetite 
and whim of inconsistency. Hence the average and low 
intellects have always enjoyment at hand. The higher 
intellect has, in a great measure, to shift for itself, or pay 
largely for any attention to its wants. It often finds 
itself lonely and abandoned, and had not nature given it a 
great store of internal resources, it would oftener be 
as Lamb found himself when Coleridge was removed 
from him. "You are," Lamb writes to him "the 
only correspondent, and I might add the only friend 
I have in the world. I go nowhere, and have no 
acquaintance. Slow of speech and reserved of manners, 
no one seeks or cares for my society, and I am left 
alone." "In your absence," he says in another letter, 
" I feel a stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes 
and fears of this life." The matter of the letters of 
Coleridge, which do not appear to have been preserved, 
can only be hazily traced in Lamb's replies. From these 
we perceive that the Poet-Philosopher launches, as usual, 
abroad into the vast ocea,n of opinion and speculation, and 



19 

gives sail to every wind that blows. Sometimes Lamb is 
puzzled with, this mysticism, as in one of his letters, where 
Coleridge said, "It is by the press that God hath given finite 
spirits, both evil and good, a portion as it were of his omnipo- 
tence." Here the divine and human mind seem to Lamb 
to unite, and he asks if such be not blasphemy. In another 
passage, written as a consolation under a terrible calamity, 
Coleridge says, " You are a temporary sharer in human 
misery that you may be an eternal partaker of the divine 
nature." This seems to Lamb almost impiety. He recoils 
from it. He weighs up the pride, vain-glory and 
hypocrisy of the animal, and can perceive nothing in such 
a compound worthy to hang even on the skirts of divinity. 
We cite these only to throw a little light on the two 
minds, so singularly apart in their ideas, and yet so 
singularly together in their sympathies. But when Lamb 
remonstrates with Coleridge, he does it mistrustingly. 
He so reverences the abundance of that mind from which 
lie had been accustomed to draw knowledge, that he 
seems to totter when his opinion clashes with that of his 
friend. Lamb is always a disciple to Coleridge. In 
metaphysical topics there was never the least kind of 
disapproval. But when these metaphysics threw some of 
their daring notions on theology, Lamb admitted them 
with fear and hesitation. He confesses weakness, and 
stammers out a little independence. 

But no themes were so congenial to Lamb as literary 
themes, and he had already imbibed that thorough taste 
for the old drama and for quaint prose, which ruled him 
throughout life. Dainty passages in Beaumont and 



20 

Fletcher, or Isaac Walton, or Massinger, are frequent 
subjects for his pen. He loves to pick out their shy charms, 
and to recommend them to his correspondents. Modern 
literature, and even modern poetry, enjoyed little of the 
consideration of his quaint taste. We are inclined to 
believe that this characteristic of Lamb was really the 
feeling of all those who were destined to be the reformers 
and teachers of their time. The vapid, cold-blooded, 
mean-spirited literature of the day drove every really bold 
mind back on older writers, who told nobler tales in simpler 
language. But the literary love of a young man soon 
begets imitation. Coleridge was busy in compacting his 
excursive ideas into verse; and Lamb, with such 
inclinings to rich old composition, in an age when poetry 
was the most popular form of literature, could hardly 
avoid adventuring as a poet of another kind. 

One of the singularities of this spring-tide of an era 
of poetry was the partnerships which the young aspirants 
formed, during the first flight of their broocllings. Words- 
worth and Coleridge sent out the Lyrical Ballads in 
conj unction. Southey and Lovell had preceded this example 
by four years, in a volume which is almost forgotten. Lamb, 
Coleridge, and Lloyd were associated together in a third 
compound volume. There seems to have been no 
particular reason for these associations, except the hearty 
friendships which were common to the writers, and their 
anxiety to get into print in the most economical way. 
Yet poetry was then a far more profitable article than it 
is now. Every newspaper had a corner appropriated to 
the poet, and every magazine and periodical, not devoted 



21 

to special subjects, would as soon have dropped its editor 
as its poets. Lamb assigns to Coleridge the honor of 
giving his mind the poetical twist. But the direction of 
his nature tended that way. Accident could only expose 
its secret towardliness. For though he afterwards gave up 
the mere structure of verse, he, nevertheless, continued in 
his prose to pour out sufficient of the matter of poetry 
to build up a great reputation. It is only the logical 
definition of poetry which separates Elia from the Epistles 
of Horace or Pope. 

This volume was some time undergoing the process 
of shaping and completing. It was at length published 
by Cottle of Bristol. It contains only twenty eight pages by 
Lamb, and is merely remarkable as the only production of 
his mind which he thought worth publishing up to this 
date, 1797. Lloyd, the associate in this volume with 
Coleridge, was the son of a Birmingham banker. He had 
been taken prisoner by the magical talk of Coleridge at 
Cambridge, where they were both students, had devoted 
himself to literature, and now, for the first time, like 
Lamb, appeared before the world. 

But nearly a year before the publication of this volume 
an event had happened, which cast its shadow over the 
whole of Lamb's life, or rather prescribed its course. 
Insanity had manifested itself in Lamb's family, and 
Lamb himself had, in 1795, suffered from an attack of it. 
It seems to have lasted only a few weeks, and it is not 
well known whether there was any external cause to 
which it could be referred ; but fortunately it never 
returned after this attack. Lamb, in his first known 



22 

letter to Coleridge, thus alludes to himself at this period. 
u My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six 
weeks that finished last year (1795,) and began this, your 
very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse 
at Horton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't 
bite anyone. But mad I was ! And many a vagary my 
imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if 
all were told. . . Coleridge, it may convince you of 
my regards for you when I tell you my head ran on you 
in my madness as much almost as on another person, 
who, I am inclined to think, was the more immediate 
cause of my temporary insanity. . . At some future 
time I will amuse you with an account as full as my 
memory will permit of the strange turn my fancy took. I 
look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy ; 
for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure 
happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the 
grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad ! 
All now seems to me vapid, comparatively so." This 
malady, which Lamb sports with so gaily, assumed in his 
sister a complexion of the most tragic horror. The attack 
on the brother seems to have been an accident, and not 
a part of his constitution, or perhaps the germ was 
manageably weak. But madness in Miss Lamb was almost 
her nature, and sanity her abnormal state. The family in 
1796 was in a condition of trouble from the age and 
helplessness of the father and mother, but by no means such 
as to account for the violent frenzy which suddenly broke 
out in Miss Lamb. The father was nearly in dotage, the 
mother bed-rid. The income of Charles added to the 



23 

pension of the father was sufficient for tidy circumstances, 
and Miss Lamb added a little by millinery. She had 
thus her business to attend to, had apprentices to look 
after, and the care of the aged parents devolved in a great 
measure on her. It is supposed that these anxieties, added 
one to another, brought to a crisis that malady which had 
shown its existence previously, and now seemed to be 
settling into inert melancholy. But this indication 
suddenly changed. "It appeared," says a newspaper 
report of the time, "that while the family were preparing 
for dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife lying on the 
table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little girl, her 
apprentice, round the room. On the calls of her infirm 
mother to forbear, she renounced her first object, and 
with loud shrieks approached her parent. The child by 
her cries quickly brought up the landlord of the house, 
but too late. The dreadful scene presented to him the 
mother lifeless, pierced to the heart on a chair, her 
daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal 
knife, and the old man her father weeping by her side, 
himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a severe 
blow he received from one of the forks she had been 
madly hurling about the room." 

This event, the most dreadful that can be imagined, 
consigned to Lamb the care of his sister for life. Hence- 
forth he appears as the guardian of her existence, while 
she, in her intervals of health, became to him the most 
invaluable comrade and housekeeper. The madness that 
thus in a moment broke up the household and happiness of 
Lamb was a constantly recurring malady in his sister, during 



24 

a life prolonged to more than seventy years. But it had 
now done all the mischief it was destined to do. Both sister 
and brother henceforth watched and anticipated the 
coming on of the affliction, and whenever the warning was 
given, sister and brother walked together to the asylum, 
which the former knew but too well was the only means 
for preventing other tragedies. Charles, we are told, 
carried the strait waistcoat, which was kept for these sad 
occasions ; and during the interval of the imprisonment of 
Mary Lamb, which was commonly about six weeks at a time, 
the brother passed his days in a state even sadder than 
those of his sister. Every return to her home was as a 
renewal of his existence, a holiday, and festival. 

This sad event hindered for a time all the literary 
plans, and deranged all the literary visions, which, under 
the spell of Coleridge, were springing up in his correspon- 
dent. " God," he writes just after the event, " has 
j^reserved me my senses ; I eat, and drink, and sleep, and 
I have my judgment, I believe, very sound. . . With 
me the former things have passed away, and I have some- 
thing more to do than to feel. . . Mention nothing of 
poetry ; I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of 
that kind." Yet just before he had been busy and sanguine 
in contributing to the poetical volume, and this resolution 
was but the desperation bred by the calamity strug- 
gling to heal itself. In a month or two the old inclination 
returned, and exertion resumed its old course. So soon 
do the most terrible changes of life blend with movements 
they cannot alter. Miss Lamb recovered, was removed 
from the asylum to which she had been consigned, and 



25 

her brother faced these terrible circumstances of his early 
life boldly, because he bad that good fortune to rely on, 
which had set utter poverty at defiance. We can bear 
many misfortunes, which we rate greater than poverty, 
with far more steadiness than we can bear even the dread 
of poverty. " God be praised, Coleridge," he writes in a 
subsequent letter, "wonderful as it is to tell, I have never 
once been otherwise than collected and calm ; even in the 
dreadful day, and in the midst of the terrible scene, I 
preserved a tranquillity, which bystanders may have 
construed into indifference — a tranquillity not of despair. 
Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious 
principle that most supported me ? . . I felt I had 
something else to do than to regret. . . I had the 
whole weight of the family thrown on me." Thus, even 
at the crisis of the misfortune, there was the bearableness, 
which springs from a sense of a duty ; — a promise in 
occupation to remove the greater weight of the calamity, 
and that feeling, fostered and followed out, accomplished 
what it promised. 

"We are almost entirely indebted to the letters of 
Coleridge for what knowledge we possess of these early 
details of Lamb's life. Coleridge was the first of his 
literary correspondents, and for some time the sole one. 
Coleridge, as we have seen, awakened in Lamb the 
ambition of authorship, or directed it, if he did not 
altogether originate it. Out of the friendship of Coleridge 
grew the connection with Lloyd, and afterwards with 
Southey and Wordsworth. And out of Lamb's connection 
with Lloyd grew his connection with Manning. So that 



26 

the Christ's Hospital school-boy intimacy of Lamb and 
Coleridge determined the most hearty and lasting friend- 
ships of Lamb's life, and gave direction to its literary 
power, and was the cause of that store of mirth, and 
wisdom, and confession, which belong to his letters. To 
these intimates by far the greater portion of Lamb's letters 
are addressed. Indeed, the only other person who at all 
occupied an important place in his correspondence was 
Bernard Barton, to whom Lamb did not become known 
till 1822. 

The early letters to Coleridge are, for the most part, 
occupied with criticism and suggestions on Poems that 
have now somewhat of the aspect of productions that have 
had their day. Coleridge was then working at his 
Sybilline Leaves, Wordsworth on his Lyrical Ballads, 
Southey at his Epics. These productions in invention, 
novelty, vigor, and fire, are far beyond anything that has 
been produced since 1830. Yet their popularity has, in a 
great measure, ceased. They are still published, still read ; 
but they are rather looked on as the feeble lispings of an 
age of infancy, and the admirers of the late artificial and 
tame school hardly appreciate the enthusiasm that could 
stake reputations on the Ancient Mariner, Thaiaba, and 
the Idiot Boy. But posterity after all must make its own 
selections. A sirloin will mostly be preferred to a hash, 
and whatever may be the ultimate opinion on the early poets 
of the nineteenth century, facts which give us a little 
glimpse into the manufactory, whence so many and such 
memorable productions were thrown forth, will always 
have their interest. There cannot be a doubt that posterity 



27 

will appropriate something from each of the great poets of 
the period, but it is doubtful whether there will be even a 
line selected by that vigilant critic from the volume which 
Cottle published at Bristol. Lamb and Coleridge would 
have left no more name than Lloyd behind them, had 
they not worked richer veins of genius than this first 
volume manifested. It is curious now to read of the care 
and caution which these young authors exhibit during the 
period of incubation. How they tone lines now forgotten, 
write, re-write, and polish what will not bear the contact 
of half a generation. And then we almost come to the 
unwilling conclusion that all this labor was only exerted 
to bring about forgetfulness, or a meagre notice in the 
compilations of the literature of the age. And then we 
are beset by this hesitation: — Are our canons of judgment 
pure ? Are we free from the taint of supercilious taste, 
and the false idolatry of a second-rate age 1 Do not the 
works which we exalt bear the same relation to Words- 
worth and Byron as the monkish hymns bore to Horace 
and Catullus ] We pause for a reply. 

The year after this volume was published, Coleridge 
left England for Germany, so that Lamb lost the " guide, 
philosopher, and friend " of his literary childhood. He 
had, however, been beforetime introduced to Southey, and 
had spent a fortnight at Burton, in Hampshire, as the 
guest of the poet. He had thus secured a correspondent, 
not equal in value to Coleridge, but one who afterwards 
became his true steady friend. Southey had already a 
reputation. He had published his Lyric Poems, Joan of 
Arc, and Thalaba, and was preparing his Eclogues for the 



28 

press. Some of these he sent to Lamb, and Lamb criti- 
cised, and sometimes objected to details ; but on the whole 
showed himself a warm admirer of his new friend. Indeed, 
confidence between the two was soon established, and 
South ey became second only to Coleridge. It is interesting 
to trace the difference which appears in the letters of 
Lamb to these two friends. To Coleridge, Lamb imparted 
everything. He was seldom or ever sportful, but often 
serious. He broke up his heart to him. He had no 
misgivings that he could be too free, or too confident, or 
too earnest. He wrote with more reverence than he 
would have done to a father, with more love than he 
would have done to a mother. He believed in him. He 
looked on his reputation as part of his property. He 
asked his advice when he was in difficulties ; and he 
followed his counsels, when he gave it. There is thus a 
serious tone in his Coleridge correspondence, resulting 
from the depth of feeling, whence he dug his confessions. 
But there is not this intensity in the correspondence with 
South ey. It becomes perhaps more interesting on that 
account. It shows another side of the intellect of the 
man. We write of trifles, and common places, and the 
ups and downs of feelings to sisters and parents. But to 
our more removed correspondents, we endeavour to make a 
more intellectual display. Heart and affections are cast, 
aside. We become competitors for opinion. We strike for 
admirations, and even for jealousies. We like to show 
how we can handle trifles, and make them as interesting 
as catastrophes. We like to play with common place in a 
manner so graceful that it becomes novelty, and attracts 



29 

the interest of invention. It seems that something of 
this kind of ambition moved Lamb in his correspondence? 
with Southey. He no longer imparted his religious 
feelings, his hearth cares, his sorrows, his hopes, his 
disappointments, as he did to Coleridge. But, on the 
contrary, he began to show more clearly what his mind could 
do — how it could hover over its subject, and play with 
it ; that there was dalliance in it ; that, notwithstanding 
its hard schooling, it was still full of sport and merriment ; 
that it could turn everything it touched topsy-turvy, and 
yet set it on its feet again. Still, this liveliness had its 
growth. Its lightness and ease were fourteen years in 
reaching their perfection. It was not till 1810 that 
sportiveness and humour gave their tickling charm to 
everything Lamb wrote, and touched all his correspondence 
with the most refined and charming comedy, — chaste 
beyond other chastity, gay beyond other gaiety. 

But we must now turn to another scene. Up to this 
time, Lamb has been a mere private person, an India 
house clerk, addicted to quiet and peculiar reading, with 
an itch for composition, which had found relief in about 
thirty pages of verses in a small duodecimo. There was 
nothing obtrusive in the man, but much that was really 
retiring ; there was nothing startling to propriety in the 
poetry, but something almost commonplace. Since, 
however, it made its appearance in the same volume with 
poetry of Coleridge, and Coleridge had already talked 
himself into a party, and that party was feared and hated 
as party had never been feared or hated before, Lamb 
had put in a sort of underhand claim to the fate of a 



30 

partisan. This party was Jacobin, and it was taunted with 
cherishing ideas, of which Robiespierre, Collot D'Herbois, 
and Carrier had been the representatives. 

During times of quiet, in the lull between great 
storms, when the minds of men are at ease, with respect 
to political regularity, and they apply their energies to 
social improvement, commerce, and the sciences, it is 
hardly possible to realise the state of feeling and opinion 
which prevails during convulsions. And yet these easy 
times, fascinating in the closet, have really been times of 
short duration in general. If we could form a debt and credit 
account of convulsion and quiet, it would be found that 
convulsion had a far larger estate in the political common- 
wealth than quiet. Almost every generation has its own 
disturbance, its own fever and madness, mostly derived 
from political fever and madness. History is full of these 
repetitions, never identical in detail, yet pretty regular in 
their general outline. But this law seemed, at the latter 
end of the last century, to be about to break up. The 
French Revolution opened with a fury, and proceeded 
onwards with a succession of horrors, that were wholly 
unlike every former convulsion. Its violence seemed 
likely to tear society up by the roots, and the period of 
rest, which had succeeded former disturbances, seemed 
likely, in this case, to be the end of society altogether No 
one understood it, no one trusted it. Its partisans of 
to-day were its foes to-morrow, and they who had put the 
first match to the fuel were the first to clamour for water 
to extinguish it. After the lapse of nearly three quarters 
of a century, we are able to look upon its machinery with 



SI 

& more correct vision, but it is still obscured with 
unaccountable crimes and inconsistencies. There was, 
however, this distinction, which separated it by a vast 
distance from other historical revolutions, with which it 
seemed, on a hasty glance, to be closely connected. It 
was the first example of a combination of the lowest 
classes to overthrow a government. There had been 
revolutions in Spain, in Russia, in Sweden, in Italy, and 
in England. But the monarchs, or nobles, or the middle 
classes, or the soldiers had been the directors of the 
political movements in all these former cases. The 
revolutions in England had hardly even recognised the 
mob in their course. That of John had been the work 
of the Barons and the Church. That of Charles the First 
had been the work of the Parliament. The masses never 
appeared in it but as secondary powers. That of James 
the Second had been, in like manner, effected by Whigs 
in combination with the Church and Nonconformists- 
The people were e^en less discovered in its working than 
in that of Charles the Eirst. They never assumed even 
so much as a secondary power in it. But the French 
revolution was effected by the fury of the populace alona 
This was its supreme head and director. Parliamentary 
debate and financial expedients were merely desperate 
attempts to allay the furies in the streets. The real active 
forces in the work were monster processions ; mob menaces ; 
demagogues ranting on the rights of man, and the 
abominations of governments derived from feudal slavery ; 
visionaries demanding the destruction of images, and monu- 
ments of the past; threatening songs howled from the lips of 



32 

roughs and desperadoes ; deputations from workmen, who 
seldom worked ; and the abuse of women, who then showed, 
on a wide theatre, what a crime that fascinating angel can 
be translated into. Yice and Enthusiasm were the sole 
agents that had any authority, and all the vicious rallied 
round the idea of plunder ; all the enthusiastic round the 
idea of reconstruction, on principles that excluded vice 
from its contingencies. The demands of such persons 
were on a par with their knowledge and their heartlessness. 
The relations of society were to them oppressions, the 
duties of society were slaveries, law and subordination 
were devices to enrich one party at the expense of many. 
The young sided with the most irrational, as is natural to 
them. They saw, in the overthrow of a government, that 
did not deserve to stand, by the help of powers, that had 
not the intelligence to understand the extent of their 
unfitness, a means of realising the dreams of an impossible 
philosophy. Out of the debris of King, Notables, Tiers 
Etat, States General, Edicts, they believed it possible to 
construct a government, in which the highest and lowest 
ranks would be drawn much closer together than they 
had ever been ; in which brotherhood might take the 
place of constraint, and mutual reliance supercede much 
of the necessity of police and military control. It is some 
excuse that young men were allured by this sparkling 
prospect, when even elderly men, who had shown traces 
of philosophic exactness, were drawn into the delusion. 
A revolution, that thus fed the hopes and wishes of the 
ignorant and the base, and did not deter philosophy and 
experience, — which, at the same time, welded the masses 



33 

into one great union, and leavened the mass with 
attractive philosophy, overspread Europe, and weakened its 
strongest governments for a time. All the old restraints had 

given way. and masters and servants were, for a period, 
hardly distinguishable. No example in history, no theory in 
Philosophy, no idea derived from social experience, no 

security provided by religion, no bond of race and nature 
was equal to solve the great problem which was presented 
in France of a people that had burst their boundaries, and 
were plundering; with wild orgies, the rights and wealth of 
centuries. Despair and zeal, eagerness to clutch and 
eagerness to save, the recklessness of the base, the fright 
and palsy of the weak, the insolence and boldness of the 
poor, the obstinacy of the rich ; masters mistrusting their 
servants, servants betraying their masters, the child 
denouncing the parent, the parent abandoning the child. 
affection turned into selfishness, religion into an operatic- 
scene, — were all mixed up in one compound, that appeared 
to many as a stage in the reconstruction of society, to 
others as the rubbish of a great temple, crushed by an 
earthquake. Such a state presented no firm ground for 
any opinion. What was solid to-day, was quagmire 
to-morrow. The reliance of one hour was the betrayal of 
the next. Things might end as they begun, or they might- 
return to order and sobriety, such as they had never 
before known, or they might break up a great nation into 
a number of insignificant cantons. Every one was left 
free to choose, either the good or the evil, from such an 
impounded mixture of both. Those who had sanguine 
hopes and warm imaginations generally looked for the 

D 



34 

replumage of the eagle. Those who had much to lose, had 
seen much of the world, and had grown hard with a 
regular sobriety of life and action, looked on the French 
revolution as the triumph of the evil principle, as the 
commencement of the reign of Satan. 

These two parties were strong in England. The 
sympathy of one was the antipathy of the other. Fox, 
already hoary in Parliamentary experience ; and Mackin- 
tosh, then only known as a struggling barrister, were 
eager defenders of the first party. Burke, old like Fox in 
Parliamentary experience ; and Canning, then hardly 
better than an Eton scholar, were heart and soul with the 
second. These great names attracted followers, and 
divided the land as it were between them. The young, 
the radical, and those who had little or no property to 
defend, were mostly with Fox and Mackintosh. The old, 
the nobles, the land-owners, and the Tories were with 
Burke. The lowest class in England sympathised with the 
lowest class in France, and applauded every example of 
successful assault on royalty, aristocracy, clergy, and 
venerable institutions. Almost all the other classes, 
trembling for themselves, sided with rank and order. 

Southey and Coleridge, who had been linked by 
friendship and mutual tastes before Coleridge and Lamb 
became intimate, had among their youthful schemings, 
devised a plan to regenerate society. The old was over 
old, the good not good enough ; so, like Wordsworth's 
Bob Boy, they set about making a world of better 
stuff. The old freebooter did this in the simple way 
of emptying whatever purses he could get hold of. 



35 

The new scheme consisted in never having a purse 
to empty. It was to be established in the wilds of 
America, and was to nourish on peace, good-will, and 
mutual support. The scheme was named Pantisocracy. 
But while it was in preparation, the temptation of 
Satan, who is always plotting against noble ideas, 
assumed the shape of a milliner of Bristol. Southey and 
Coleridge were smitten by two sisters. They married, 
and Pantisocracy seemed destined to be forgotten, and 
the long debated problem of human perfection was again 
laid aside for the sake of two dressmakers. Them new 
moral world was the dream of young ability, that 
pushes obstacles out of its way, and perches itself with a 
leap on the top of the highest elevation. Its mountains 
have no chasms, or avalanches, or glaciers, or precipices. 
It is delightful folly for the time, and though it seems 
always destined to end like alchemists' experiments, yet 
it is a treasure won, while it remains on trial. The 
marriages, as we have said, were the natural endings of 
these happy visions. But though one young dream had 
perished, it left the mind prepared for another. The 
French revolution seemed a bolder, grander, speedier way 
of achieving something of the coveted Pantisocracy 
than even their own back* woods' republic. Three parts 
of the greatest nation in Europe had at once come to 
their aid. They looked on themselves almost as voices 
crying in the wilderness. — " The day of salvation is 
at hand." Southey and Coleridge became at once 
identified with the party of Fox and Mackintosh. 

But the crudeness and heat of the anticipations on 



36 

one side were balanced by the hatred and rancour on the 
other. Those who thought themselves in danger saw in 
every one, who advocated even modified French principles, 
a deadly foe. The battle between the English Tory and 
the English Radical bordered on that of knives and 
daggers. Everything but the actual weapon was used. 
Whatever words could damage, whatever aspersions could 
brand, whatever filthy notions insinuation could awaken, 
were employed to point out the partisans of France, and 
heap them with scorn and disgrace. But not only were the 
actual partisans disgraced, it was also a disgrace to know 
them, to exchange a letter with them, or to hold any friendly 
relation with them. The man who spoke a word for the mob, 
that pulled down the Bastile, drew an atmosphere of odium 
around him. He was tabooed, he was a pariah, he could 
not touch any clean thing, and leave it clean. Coleridge 
was associated with Southey; and Coleridge, Lamb, and 
Lloyd were also associated. The wickedness then of 
Coleridge and Southey must also belong to Lamb and Lloyd. 
It mattered not whether they had ever written a word in 
favor of Jacobin or Girondin, or had sympathised with 
Marat or Charlotte Corday. They had published poems 
in conjunction with Coleridge, and therefore they must be 
Jacobins. They could only print poems with a republican, 
because they were republicans. So reasoned the anti- 
republicans. 

It happened that the government, which Pitt con- 
ducted so long, was at first a wholly illiterate govern- 
ment. It had not one first-rate writer to support it. 
And whatever ability it ever possessed, during its H\e and 



37 

twenty years of authority, was all, like its own head, 
ability that had been originally on the opposition side. 
Its weakness, at this period, was felt severely by Pitt. 
He was anxious to stem the torrent of philosophic 
democracy by argument, or ridicule, or even misrepresen- 
tation, if it were but clever. He did not wish to depend on 
warrants, and magistrates, and constables alone, but on a 
force more popular and harmless. But all ability seemed 
to be born Whig. Toryism could not get a single 
tolerable writer. It had to drivel, and bark, and threaten 
in the weakest commonplaces. Its pen was worn to the 
stump, and no one arose to re-point it. At length Eton 
came to the rescue. In that aristocratic forcing-frame, 
the Tory has generally been stronger than the Whig 
element. At that time it had fortunately recently sent 
forth two or three young spirits, who had just the sort of 
ability that was needed to blend ridicule with rancour, to 
make laughter do the work of rage, and to deal blows at 
an enemy, by connecting him with what he hated, and 
overpowering him with compliments, that would be a 
disgrace to him if they were true. Few writers have ever 
possessed this talent so remarkably as George Canning. 
He, together with John Hookham Frere, George Ellis, and a 
few others of less importance, projected the Anti- Jacobin. 
Pitt encouraged the undertaking, and even contributed to 
it ] and Gifford, already known as one of the most cutting 
satirists, was selected as Editor. The prose part of the 
work had little of the fineness of wit and humour, which 
has acted as embalmment to the poetry. It was generally 
coarse, personal, and malicious ; and, indeed, there was a 



38 

sufficient infusion of these ingredients in the poetry. But 
the poetry was clever, as well as coarse ; and witty, as 
well as malicious. It has been a question to determine 
who were the actual authors of the most remarkable pieces ; 
as they were written, it is said, in a peculiar manner, to 
avoid detection. One writer originated and begun a 
piece, and left it in a common apartment, hired for the 
purpose, and open to the confederate Anti-Jacobins. Any 
of these falling in would read, and add a line or verse, or 
suggest some sharp idea. Thus many of the poems are 
attributed to several writers ; but Canning, Frere, and 
Ellis have to bear the burden of the greater number. 
Indeed, the very best pieces, which are distinguished for 
the greatest quantity of that quality which does not 
perish with the occasion of it, have been universally 
assigned to Canning. The Needy Knife Grinder, the 
Loves of the Triangles, and the New Morality are of this 
class. No sooner, however, was the work started than 
the young poets, especially the Pantisocracians and their 
friends, were shot at. Pantisocracy and Infidelity ; 
Liberalism and the destruction of all private rights ; the 
desire to elevate the lower classes, and the plunder of the 
rich, were such, convertible terms and ideas that they were 
at once confounded. Moreover, the young poets, Coleridge 
and Southey, had begun their career on a studied theory. 
The prevalence of glitter, sentiment, prudery, and 
made-up emotion, had so disgusted them, that they fell 
back on all that seemed opposite to these false qualities. 
Hence they threw away what was called poetic diction, 
and endeavoured to transfer the unpolished speech of 



39 

beggars, laborers, and artisans to the service of Epic and 
Lyric verse. A temper, at all inclined to ridcule, had a 
banquet ready spread for it, when such lines as these had 
been written by one of its foes : — 

* ' Cold was the night wind ; drifting fast the snow fell ; 
Wide were the downs, and shelterless and naked ; 
"When a poor wanderer struggled on her journey, 

Weary and way sore." 

Canning eagerly seized the opportunity thus afforded him. 
He began upon the Pantisocracians in the first number. 
Gilray, the Caricaturist, was employed, and his first 
sketch represented Southey and Coleridge with asses' ears, 
and Lamb and Lloyd as Toad and Frog. An inscription 
on the cell-door of Mother Brownrig, a Milliner, who 
was hung for whipping her apprentices to death, written 
by Canning, was a parody on Southey's inscription on 
Marten the Regicide. The second number contained the 
famous Knife Grinder, a parody on the poem of Southey, 
from which we have quoted. 

Among the charlatans and mountebanks, who found 
place for their absurdities in the capacious principles of 
the French revolution, was Larevelliere-Lepaux. A 
deformed mind was in this case united with a deformed 
body. He was hunchbacked and crooked, but these defects 
did not lessen his self -estimation, or warn him, that he 
was unequal to the task of rooting up Christianity, and 
establishing a few of his own bandy-legged ideas in its 
place. The new sect, of which he was head or front, was 
called Theophilanthropist, and its object of adoration was 
a new Bible, or Great Book, as it was called, in which all 



40 

the virtuous actions of society were to be registered. Out 
of this volume their followers were to be continually 
reminded of their duties ; and, should any times of violence 
and disturbance arise, under such a pure system, they were 
bidden to come forward, and exhort the raging roughs and 
determined villains to peacefulness, and to read them a 
chapter out of the Great Book. When oppressed or pro- 
scribed, they were to retire to a burying ground, to wrap 
themselves up in their great coats, and to wait the 
approach of death. The Theophilanthropists procured, by 
means of Lepaux, a decree that they should have the use 
of certain churches, alternately with the Catholics. They 
thus obtained nearly twenty churches. The Romish para- 
phernalia were covered up during the Theophilanthropist 
ceremonial, and reconsecrated afterwards. They had four 
festivals ; one to Socrates, one to St. Vincent de St. Paul, 
one to Rousseau, and the fourth to Washington. Their 
creed had two articles — the Existence of God, and the 
Immortality of the Soul. Children were nominated by 
the letters C. T. being traced on the forehead (Citoyen 
Theophilantrope. ) Marriages were celebrated by coupling 
the Bride and Bridegroom with ribbons and garlands. 
One of the colleagues of Lepaux proposed to him, as an 
infallible means of securing the triumph of his sect, that 
he should be hanged, and rise again from the dead on the 
third day. The fanatic did not think this a very safe test, 
and so declined it. This remarkable system, and it is one 
specimen of many kinds, which then prevailed, did not 
prevent Lepaux from becoming popular, and even 
attaining one of the chief places in the government. He 



41 

was chosen one" of the five Directors in 1795, and had the 
departments of Education, the Sciences, Arts, and Manufac- 
tures assigned him. Here then was an object that seemed 
made to be laughed at. Canning could not spare anything 
so ridiculous. He has thus worked him, with two of his 
brother Directors, into the Loves of the Triangles. 

"Thus happy France in thy regenerate land, 
"Where taste and rapine saunter, hand in hand ; 
Where, nursed in seats of innocence and bliss, 
Reform greets terror with fraternal kiss ; 
Where mild philosophy first taught to scan 
The wrongs of providence and rights of man ; 
Where memory broods o'er freedom's earlier scene 
The lantern bright and brighter guillotine, — 
Three gentle swains evolve their longing arms, 
And woo the young republic's virgin charms, 
And though proud Barras with the fair succeed, 
Though not in vain the attorney Rewbell plead, 
Oft doth th' impartial nymph their love forego 
To clasp thy crooked shoulders, blest Lepaux." 

But it was in the ]STew Morality that Lamb and his friends 

were ridiculously united with the humpbacked Theophilan- 

thropist, whom Canning represents as sending his 

Augustin, to convert the English to the Great Book, in the 

shape of Buonaparte. 

1 ' Ere long perhaps to this astonished isle, 
Fresh from the shores of subjugated Xile, 
Shall Buonaparte's victor fleet protect 
The genuine Theo-philanthropic sect, 
The sect of Marat, Mirabeau, Voltaire, 
Led by their Pontiff, good La B,eveillere ; 
Eejoiced our clubs shall greet him, and install 
The holy Hunchback in thy dome, St. Paul ; 
While countless votaries, thronging in his train, 
Wave their red caps, and hymn this jocund strain. 



42 

Thelwell and ye that lecture as ye go, 

And for your pains get pelted, praise Lepaux. 

•* * * * ■* * 

And ye five other wandering bards that move 
In sweet accord of harmony and love, 
Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co. , 
Tune all your mystic harps, and praise Lepaux." 

Talfourd says tliat Lamb had never even heard of the 

existence of Lepaux. In the Anarchists, published two 

months after, the four, still in society, are again assailed. 

" See faithful to their mighty dam, 
Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb, 
In splayfoot madrigals of Love, 
Soft mourning like the widowed dove, 
Pour side by side their sympathetic notes ; 
Of equal rights, and civic feasts, 
And tyrant kings, and knavish priests, 
Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats. 
And now to softer strains they struck the lyre, 
They sung the beetle or the mole, 
The dying kid or ass's foal, 
By cruel man permitted to expire." 

These aspersions were angry and bad enough, and they 
were accompanied by worse. But this worse was in 
prose, and came apparently from inferior hands, who, if 
they were not permitted to call names and invent slander, 
might as well have been nobodies. Their youth only made 
them more vain and violent. Nothing was too sacred 
for these insolent puppies of literature to bark at and 
defile. Coleridge was accused of preaching Deism, of 
being dishonored for it at Cambridge, of leaving his 
wife destitute, and his children fatherless ; and this 
malignant abuse was used as a fulcrum to displace Lamb ; 
"ex his disce his friends, Lamb and Southey." Both 



43 

Southey and Coleridge, who were the only parties who 
ever gave the least cause for any charge of holding opinions 
favorable to France, afterwards made apology for their 
conduct, by changing both their religion and their 
politics. They were welcomed into the Tory ranks, and to 
the Church, and became new examples of the doubtfulness 
of principles, which stretch \ery far away from the habits 
of society. In this case, as in many others, those, who 
had felt the construction of society defective and 
unbearable, were the first to become reconciled to it ; 
while Lamb, who had never entertained out of the way 
notions on government and men, but was content to 
accept things as he found them, never altered his position, 
or branded at one period what he had embraced at 
another. But it is of no use to complain of the injustice 
of political writers, and to draw up an indictment against 
a lot of dead dogs. They had their worry and their bark 
while they lived. They were, we may suppose, very 
happy to be able to make their snarls felt by men, who 
had grown famous on merits, which they had no claim 
to. Well-taught school-boys are very apt to fancy 
themselves geniuses ; and if their teaching should happen 
to come from Eton or Rugby, it is a thorough fact with 
them, that no good thing can come from any other source. 
Their self-sufficiency often makes their pertness something 
like cleverness ; and they sometimes, as in the case of the 
Anti- Jacobins, make a hit ; and fight, left and right, with 
spirit enough to inflict many wounds, though they may not 
compass many deaths. Throw dirt enough, some of it will 
stick, is the motto of such writers. The single genius of 






44 

Canning carried the Anti- Jacobin into a celebrity, that 
has survived its time ; for though Gifford was the director 
of the whole, he appears to have limited his help to 
direction, or to some of those smart bitter morsels of 
injustice, which now and then add heat and spice to the 
prose. Gifford hated what he struck. Canning could 
strike, and still respect the stricken. Lamb perhaps 
rather enjoyed than shrunk under the attacks of these 
young Jackals. He went on joilily, and seemingly 
indifferent to every attack \ and proved, by the friendships 
which he contracted with some of the most odioas, because 
some of the most clever radicals, that he wished to kindle 
rather than extinguish the lurid light that was cast upon 
him. However, Pitt himself saw at last that if this 
young pack of untrained hounds was permitted to yelp 
after all kinds of game, he would be losing on one hand 
more than he gained on the other. His own party began 
to fear for their own weaknesses; and, at the end of 
eight months, Pitt suddenly put a stop to the work. It 
had succeeded, and done his party good. He was wise 
enough to end a dangerous coadjutor, while it was still 
dangerous to his enemies. Actaeon's dogs devoured their 
master. Pitt perhaps felt that he might fill the position 
of Pewbell or Lepaux in another six months. 

This short political interlude is the sole political 
incident in Lamb's life. Indeed, it is surprising, when 
we consider the fierceness of some of his intimate friends 
on questions of goverment and law, that Lamb should 
have been all coldness in the midst of such fire. But he 
used politics only for sly humour; and joked at measures 



45 

that made Hunt, Hazlitt, and Godwin boil with indig- 
nation. We must return to Lamb's literary history. 
This literary history, though it ultimately sheered off 
so independently from that of his friends, Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, and Southey, was in its growth intimately 
connected with theirs, and requires the same kind 
of tracing, to discover its meaning, as we apply to their 
]jroductions. 

Xo genius is independent of its ancestors. However 
closely it may be disguised, former writings have always 
their influence on the later, and the greater their 
influence, the greater in general their value. It is 
impossible for any genius to be wholly independent. 
Yet this was the delusion, the error of the friends of 
Lamb. They believed they were capable of renewing 
literature without incorporating into it any traces that 
would suggest predecessors. They effected this, with 
respect to the poetical literature that prevailed when they 
were born, and which continued to live in a consumptive 
state till the English Bards was published. They may be 
said to have fed this literature, though did not feed upon 
it, for it was the heartier, stronger, and wealthier poetry 
which the new race were producing, which left Charlotte 
Smith, Hannah More, Miss Blamire, Anne Barbauld, 
Anne Seward, Amelia Opie, Mrs, Grant, Mrs. Tighe, 
Hayley, and Darwin, with a daily decreasing band of 
admirers. 

Poetry, but for the new race, had thus fallen 
chiefly into the hands of old maids, and expressed the demen- 
tities of thwarted nature. It was the mere rinsings of the 



46 

casks of former poets. Hence Wordsworth sought to avoid 
models, and aspired to recommence an art, which had 
been debased to such worthlessness. He wished to throw 
away all the incumbrances and supplements of. society, 
and to rely on a study of man, in that condition which 
has preserved the most numerous and liveliest traces of his 
original state. He went to nature with the same deter- 
mination. The cottage, the forest, the heath, the tarn — 
shepherds, pedlars, ploughmen, waggoners, were the staple 
from which he preferred to manufacture verse. But where 
Wordsworth is most original, he is most tiresome. It is 
where we are reminded of Spenser, Milton, and even Pope 
and Dry den, that Wordsworth becomes most truly simple 
and poetical. To have been as original as he aspired to be, 
be must never have read imaginative works at all. We 
are pretty sure that under such conditions he would never 
have been read. Such poets as Burns, Clare, and Bloomfield 
have, from their position, been in closest connection with 
nature. Yet they studied models before they began to 
write. Ferguson and Alan Bamsay were to Burns ; and 
Thomson was to Clare and Bloomfield what Milton and 
Spenser were to Wordsworth. Southey followed the 
same models as Wordsworth; and, while he remained 
at home, preferred the same kind of characters, to 
whom he imparted sentiment, by linking them with 
social wrongs. And when he left home, he arrived 
at the same uncontrolled originality, not only by 
adopting the extravagant traditions of Hindostan and 
Arabia ; but by expressing his ideas in kinds of metre 
unknown before. Coleridge studied our older ballad 



47 

literature, and enriched the study with excursions to the 
gorgeous solemnities of Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas 
Brown. Lamb sought his nourishment in the old 
dramatists, in Isaac Walton, Wither, Quarles, and even 
the old Duchess of Newcastle. Thus all these beginners 
of a new era attempted to ignore the era they succeeded 
altogether, and the last weak, polluted, nerveless drivel of 
the school of Diyden and Pope had virtually been destroyed 
when Wordsworth, South ey, and Coleridge commenced 
their career. That famous school of the Anne era, which 
enshrines some of the grandest of human productions, 
expired in the withered arms of old maids and matrons. 
Nay, we believe that whenever literature or art is con- 
signed to the keeping of the weaker sex, it has passed the 
hour of its greatness, and is destined to be soon coddled to 
death. We are not certain that this is not the case with 
the present state of our fiction, which owes so large a 
share of its bulk to female writers, and has in their hands 
already become a vehicle for double faced morality, for the 
details of bigamy, for the nauseous incidents that slope the 
way to divorces, and for preposterous intrigue, heightened 
by hysterical passions and frenzies. It is a humilating 
fact, that the nasty and the vile should be the favorite 
subjects of such a class of writers. 

Headers of by-gone literature, and we fear that they 
&re lamentally few when compared with the bulk of 
readers, will remember a work by Mackenzie named Julia 
de Houbigne. Mackenzie was a celebrity when Walter 
Scott was still at work as a writer to the Signet in 
Edinburgh, He belonged to two eras ; for while he was 



48 

a contemporary of Hume and Robertson, lie was also a 
contemporary of Burns and Jeffrey. His Julia de 
Roubigne was a remarkable production. With more taste, 
and less movement in it than its contemporary fictions, it 
left a permanent impression by the delicacy rather- than 
the depth of its matter. He is perhaps better known 
through his Man of Feeling. This work has nothing with 
which it can be associated. It belongs to no class of 
writing. It was the native overflowing of a well-disci- 
plined and highly gifted mind, and took a shape that was 
both original and forcible. No reader can forget the 
madhouse scene — a scene which, like Sterne's Le Fevre 
and the death scene in the Fisher's hut in the Antiquary, 
has no equal. These works have lost appreciation now, 
in consequence of the rude and coarse demands of the new 
bands of uneducated readers, who have rushed pell-mell 
into the libraries of this generation. The purer taste of 
Mackenzie's Julia over the general fictions of his day 
attracted Lamb, and his second work, published the same 
year as the poems, was Rosamond Gray, a tale evidently 
akin to that of Mackenzie. But whoever reads Rosamond 
Gray may see at once how possible it is for mere tact to 
outstrip genius. Lamb, with all his mental force, had 
little of that ingenuity, which is required to make that 
force felt. He could use the mind as the skilful workman 
uses a log of mahogany. He could convert it into beautiful 
and tasteful articles ; but he had not the mere shopkeeper 
skill of putting his productions in such positions as would 
show them off at the best advantage. He wrote in the 
most simple and artless style, he drew the purest character, 



49 

lie adopted all that we approve and aim at, as far as is 
convenient, in real life ; in short, all that we consider 
right and good. This is what few writers are able to do. 
This is the genuine test of ability. This is turning the 
log into elegant and useful articles. But these articles 
require j^roper situations to display thern. It will not do 
to hide a rich cabinet in a dark corner ; or huddle chairs 
and tables together in confusion. Writers, who are 
unable to tell things simply, and draw character naturally, 
can often put what characters they can draw in situations 
that will show them off to better advantages than they 
deserve. But Lamb put his characters in whatever 
position they fell. He dropped them from his pen, and 
left them to find their own places. They seem, therefore. 
more like unsorted goods in a warehouse than articles 
arranged to show their meri.cs, and attract approbation. 
Now this art of dressing, as it is called, is an art 
which an apprentice might accomplish; but the manage- 
ment which is required to produce the article is 
another matter. Here the faculties of mastership and 
experience are both often unequal to it. Lamb could do 
the work of the master, but he failed in that of the appren- 
tice. He could collect together intellectual fabric of a fine 
quality, and in sufficient abundance ; but he could not 
dress it afterwards, he could not put it in the most showy 
places, he could not link incident to incident in such a 
manner that they should fill the reader with suspense, and 
twist and baffle him with various surmises. Any third- 
rate hack of a third-rate theatre can do this. The writer 
of a dirty farce for a penny gaff would be supreme in such a 

E 



50 

faculty. But to Lamb it was a drudgery, an impossibility, 
The incidents of Rosamond Gray seem silly to readers 
who have revelled in the smart dialogue and surprises of 
the modern novel. Rosamond and her grandmother are 
the only remains of their family. Misfortunes have 
deprived Rosamond of her parents, and with the scantiest 
means, she and her grandmother are, at the opening of the 
tale, living in a humble cottage. Rosamond is thirteen 
years old, and very beautiful and good. She attracts the 
notice of Allen Clare, a lad of fifteen, who is as amiable 
as Rosamond, and has also lost his parents. He lives with 
his only sister, ten years his elder. He is or will be 
wealthy. This sister had formerly been subjected to the 
attentions of a villain named Matravis. Allen and 
Rosamond are deeply in love ; the sister perceives it, she 
proposes to visit Rosamond \ they are mutually delighted 
with each other, they ramble in the evening, and everything 
promises a happy chapter of human history. But here the 
woeful defect of Lamb in contriving incidents comes out in 
all its absurdity. The walk of Rosamond and Miss Clare 
had so delighted the former, that when she had retired to 
her room, the warm, clear moonlight night provoked her 
to retrace their walk. In its loneliest part, she meets the 
former lover of Miss Clare in a state of drunkenness — 
there is crime — -Rosamond dies under the horror of it, and 
Allen Clare becomes a philanthropist, and even succours 
the death-bed of his arch-enemy Matravis. 

It will be readily perceived that there is very unncessary 
horror here ; that the villainy of such a character as Matravis 
needs more occasion and preparation \ — that the heroine, in 



51 

throwing herself in the way of her fate, commits an 
unpardonable folly, because a thoroughly unlikely one. 
Young ladies, however pleased they may be with rambles 
in a bright summer evening among glens and wood-walks, 

do not choose to seek them alone at midnight. The 
beauty of the heroine, and the tenderness of the materials 
are spoiled by such violations of probability ; which are 
the more to be wondered at, as Lamb evidently felt, and 
appreciated with great force, the gradual unfolding of the 
swathes of destiny in those grand tragedies he so delighted 
to pause over. However, Rosamond Gray sold better 
than his poerns, and it is still admired, and perhaps oftener 
read than Julia de Roubigne or the Man of Feeling, which 
are far finer works. 

Lamb's next effort was the Drama. He was two years 
older when he ventured on this experiment, and it might 
have been anticipated that two years' studious reading of 
the old (iramatists ; by one who so entered into their 
quaint humors, would have improved him in that part 
of his labor, which appears as such a defect in Rosamond. 
In 1799, he had formed the plan, and begun the tragedy 
of John Woodvil. But the same faults that injure the 
tale are no less apparent in the tragedy. Lamb's ideas 
seemed to catch shades of color from old writers, beside 
which the writing of authors who had studied moderns 
only, seemed raw and heavy. And his mind was certainly 
happily formed for detecting and appropriating these 
evanescent beauties ; but it took no hold on robuster 
excellencies. The whole body of his writing is tinged with 
happinesses of expression thus caught and laid up for use. 



52 

But grosser excellencies slipped by. He either did not see 
them, or did not care for them. Though a play-goer, 
Lamb never seems to have been a play-goer of the ordinary 
sort. It was not the action upon action that made the 
gallery gape, that he looked after, but the delicate dialogue, 
the neat appropriateness of thought to feeling, the evolution 
of graces, kindred to situation and sentiment. What he 
delighted in, that he attended to almost exclusively. He 
was never one to study the humors of his readers before 
his own. Hence the individuality of his writings, the 
sincerity and ease which they show ; but, hence also his 
successive failures at first to gain the attention of the 
public. The public is a great bully, and a great coward. 
When it gets hold of a mean spirited author of much 
ambition, and little ability, it knows he dare not disobey, 
except at the peril of his expectations. With this tool 
of its humors it has neither reason nor mercy. It makes 
him paddle in all manner of dirt, and flunky it to the top 
of its bent. But when real life and soul come before it ? 
and it attempts to work the same changes on them, as it 
does on the trembling, it finds a different result. Ability 
then becomes the donor, and it is content to wait for 
reputation. The bully yields, after a short interval of 
sulkiness, and becomes an enthusiast. 

In John Woodvil we have the free unsophisticated 
dialogue, the natural easy straightforward expression, just 
as we find them in Dekker or Beaumont. But change of 
situation, accumulation of surprise, the rise and fall of 
passion, the interweaving of interests and actions are all 
wanting. Yet these are of more repute on the stage than 



53 

all other elegancies and exactnesses in mere language 
The dialogue may be inflated, and rare on with outrageous 
extravagance, provided the stage requisites be attended 
to ; while it may be as perfect as Antigone, and fail to draw 
a single approval, if the stage requisites be neglected. 
The plays of Beddoes, Talfourcl, Coleridge, Lamb could 
not stand the stage. Yet they contain fine poetry, ripe 
language, and exquisite taste, which are all wanting in 
Black Eyed Susan, the Colleen Bawn, the Ticket of Leave 
Man, and Lady of Lyons, some of which plays count 
their popularities in runs of more than three hundred 
nights long. But these were put together by old stagers, 
men who, with little appreciation of the loftier powers and 
passions, could manage those rough behaviours, which the 
gallery appreciates ; and could, at the proper moment, 
make one scene whet the appetite for the next. But it is 
a singular fact that none of the group of writers, to which 
Lamb belonged, succeeded in the Drama. Almost all 
attempted it, but none succeeded. Wordsworth, Southey, 
Scott, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge were all humbled, beside 
such writers as Knowles, Holcroft, Frederic Reynolds, 
Jephson, when they set foot on the boards. Yet in 
the hands of play wrights, who had only to apply the 
stage laws to the creation of the novelist, Guy Mannering, 
Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and others of Scott's novels have been 
exceedingly popular. In fact it requires genius and mechanism 
to write a play like Yenice Preserved, and though mechanism 
will do alone and be exceedingly popular, as in the case of 
the Colleen Bawn, yet genius alone is like a light without 
a. lantern, the least puff of wind will extinguish it. 



54 

Lamb entertained good hopes for Sir John Woodvil, 
and wrote away with visions of profit and popularity 
before his eyes. He tells Southey, while he was engaged 
on it, that " it will be a medley of laughter and tears, 
prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs, wit, 
pathos, humour; and, if possible, sublimity." This 
ambitious programme was hardly half fulfilled. About 
Christmas, 1799, it was, however, finished and transmitted 
to John Kemble, in order, if possible to bring it upon the 
stage. After waiting eleven months without hearing 
either good or evil of his venture, Lamb wrote to the 
stately manager to inquire after its fate. An answer 
came back that the play was lost, and a request was 
added, that another copy might be supplied. As Lamb 
had meanwhile had the play printed, though not published, 
this request was easily complied with, supplying, however, 
not a printed copy, but one written out. Lamb had an 
interview with Kemble • but the deficiences of the Tragedy 
were just those which, in the manager's eyes, were most 
offensive, because they were those which his patrons were 
least likely to forgive. It was declined, and Lamb had 
now no resource left but to publish, which he did forthwith. 
The public gave it hardly a welcomer welcome than 
Kemble. The Edinburgh JRevieiv, then a mere kitten, 
exercising its sharp young claws on everything it could 
reach, had a short amusement with John Woodvil, which 
it attacked on the score of its antique dialogue. A brief 
analysis will be quite sufficient to show the main causes 
of failure. 

Lamb chose the son of an old Puritan for his hero, 



55 

and the period immediately after the Restoration for 
the action of his piece. Sir Walter Woodvil, the father 
of John, has been so deeply engaged in Puritan and Par- 
liamentary disloyalty as to be exempted from the act of 
indemnity. He puts on a disguise, pretends to be a 
Frenchman, and takes refuge in Sherwood forest, with his 
second son, and a small company of devoted friends. John 
meanwhile remains at the Woodvil seat. He has never 
sinned as his father has done \ but has maintained sound 
cavalier principles from the beginning of the contest 
between Charles and his Parliament. He is now sur- 
rounded by a set of Cavalier friends and parasites, who 
feed on the estate, and carry on the merriment of the 
Restoration with drink and riot. In one of these orgies 
John reveals his father's hiding place to his false friend 
Lovell, who forthwith proceeds to apprehend the old man, in 
order to hand him over to the gallows. Sir "Walter falls 
into an apoplectic fit and dies, when he finds that he has 
been betrayed by his son. These transactions occupy four 
out of the five acts of the tragedy. The fifth act is taken 
up with the repentance and remorse of John. This slim 
construction is carried on by a very terse dialogue, very 
much akin to what you would expect from Massinger or 
Ford. But the secret of the son is revealed to Lovell in 
a manner altogether childish, without cause or any previous 
inducement, or difficulty whatever \ and the catastrophe 
follows immediately after with as little preparation or 
excitement. A good master of stage effects would have 
contrasted the consciencious old Puritan, Sir Walter, with 
his Cavalier son embarrassed with emotions of filial love, 



56 

on the one hand, and public duty on the other ; and would 
not have betrayed the secret of Sir Walter's hiding place 
during a drunken revel, but rather have allowed the over 
anxiety and design of the son to save the father been 
the means of his capture. It did not want two 
such rascals as Lovell and John Woodvil to betray 
one poor old Roundhead. We can hardly understand 
how it was that such an admirer of the writings of men, 
who excelled in plot, contrivance, surprise, subtle pre- 
paration, and thoughtful unwinding of events, should 
have missed all these stage commandments, and depended 
on an accessory, not a necessity — on pure language, and 
natural sentiment. 

After this ill success, Lamb paused. Literature was 
his choice, not his necessity. His daily bread was pro- 
vided. He could do without the plaudits of Theatres, or 
the welcome of booksellers. When he wrote, he wrote 
from that state of mind which makes writing a relief — ■ 
which discharges, as it were, a debt of the brain, and 
makes its functions haler and sounder for the effort. But 
while this condition of the intellect was in the course of 
forming, he had no cause to whip it into action. He left 
it to grow uneasy by accumulation ; and, when he felt a 
strain on the nerves of thought, which a little composition 
would relieve, he sat down to compose. This is the real and 
only method for producing high class writing ; but it is a 
method which young authors have no patience to adopt, 
and old ones generally cannot afford to do so. We lose 
sight of Lamb as a literary man for six years, from 1800, 
to 1806, a pretty considerable interval, during which his 



57 

works were piles of India House Ledgers and Day Books. 
Lamb's first efforts, as we have seen, were Poetry, 
stimulated by the conversation and example of Coleridge. 
His next was Rosamond Gray, which, owed its origin to 
an enthusiasm for the works of Mackenzie. His third was 
inspired by his reading of our old Dramatists, and his 
sensitive delight in their delicate poetical truths. But 
these three works were on the whole disappointing. ISTo 
stormy applause greeted them. The public hung aloof. 
It had not been consulted, and it had no wish to be 
pleased. When La Tiaviata was received coldly, on its 
first representation at Milan, Yerdi, meeting a friend next 
morning, said, " So they say my Opera will not do," and 
then he added with a self-confidence in himself, and a tone 
of mistrust in his critics, "We shall see." He knew the 
public, and the course of its humour. In less than a year 
it was on all the stages of the great Theatres of Europe, 
and is still one of the most golden of stock operas. Lamb's 
reception never became like Verdi's ) because he did not 
apply himself so dutifully to popular tastes ; and the slow 
progress of appreciation is even yet moving. But as each 
of his former efforts had owed its direction to the natural 
attraction of his tastes, so his fourth attempt was in like 
manner produced by his habits, more than by any design 
of obeying public inclination. 

Charles Lamb had always been a playgoer. It was 
his delight in his school-days to get opportunities and 
permissions to see some artificial comedy or riotous farce. 
The change of time and taste has sadly altered the 
character of this amusement. Lamb has again and again 



58 

recorded his impressions of it, Lis love for it, the readiness 
with which he lost himself in the wiles of the performance, 
how thoroughly the passions of the boards carried him on 
with them, with what abandonment he entered into their 
mockery, how the actors were almost as real to him as 
they are to a child, how he rioted over the "starch 
spruce opinionated" Spanish loftiness of Bensley in 
Malvolio, when he seemed "to tread on air, to 
taste manna, to walk with his head in clouds, to mate 
Hyperion," till that hour of mistake was worth an age 
with the eyes open. How he enjoyed Dodd in Aguecheck 
— such an Aguecheck as never could be beaten ; when you 
saw the " first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over his 
countenance, climbing up little by little with a painful 
process," when a " glimmering of understanding would 
appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out 
again, when a part of his forehead would catch a little 
intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to 
the remainder." How he analysed Dickey Suett, who 
lield the countenances of the town in subjection by two 
syllables, which he " drolled upon richer than the cuckoo." 
How he gloried in the multiplied countenance of Munden, 
who had no face that you could properly " pin down and 
call his." He has commemorated these and other stage 
heroes with a gusto that shows how important they were 
to his pleasures — what hours of excellent fooling they had 
imparted to the flatness and staleness of existence, what a 
pure help they had been to lift the mind out of its con- 
vention, and give it a taste of free air. 

Now Lamb, though a student, was a dainty one. 



59 

He did not swallow all the offal that was put before him, 
and grow as overgrown with reading, as a Smithneld prize 
with fat. He tasted rather than devoured, and 
always left feeding with an appetite. But the most 
instructive reading of his life was apart from boohs. 
He let knowledge come to him, and welcomed it 
heartily ; but he never pressed it into his society, never 
intrigued for it, never put on airs to coax it, or assumed 
anything but that natural indifference, which sometimes 
invites more than the most importunate solicitations. 
Hence he relied on the benches of the pit for more 
instruction than the pages of Philosophy or Morals. 
While he was glowing at the wonderful multiplications of 
Munden in Cockletop, he was storing up better knowledge 
to him and for the world than he could have done under 
the writings of those, whom the world calls learned, because 
it knows very little about them. The foot-lights, the 
orchestra, the hanging strata of human expectation above, 
the glowing inclination to be pleased, that adds its rosiness 
to the whole scene, was an especial page of human life, 
that he again and again pored over. When Lamb took 
up the pen afresh, after six years' rest, it was to com- 
municate some of the knowledge that these pleasant 
perusals had taught him. It might have been expected, 
from the nature of his mind, its delicate humour, its fine 
sense of the ridiculous, and the critical power he possessed 
of detecting the under currents that run below the pro- 
ductions of our best comic writers — of Congreve, Vanburgh, 
and others — that he would have chosen this department of 
the Drama for the vent of his ideas. But he decided 



60 

otherwise. Perhaps he had a more teeming enjoyment 
in farce than in genteel comedy. It turned life out of 
doors with a wilder freedom. It seldom reminded him 
of carks and cares, which comedy, in the fulfilment of its 
duty, is obliged to do. Farce is something not only 
beyond toil and trouble, but beyond experience. It allows 
everything that will twist propriety into good humour, 
and good humour is after all little other than forgetfulness 
■ — little other than a temporary oblivion, not only of every 
care and sorrow that has happened to us, but of every 
one that menaces us. It is a kind of half death, in which 
that part of us only is dead, which makes us querulous, 
impatient, and apprehensive. But comedy is not so 
oblivious. It still remembers the miseries of life, and 
often renews them. Its world is made up of the outer 
world that it likes not, as well as the world it shapes by 
its own ingenuity, and which we may assume it approves. 
Lamb rejoiced sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, in forget- 
ting reality altogether ; and resigning himself to something 
different from all experience, or at least that on]y per- 
mitted the droll and laughable parts of experience to 
appear. Moreover, Munden, Liston, Farley, — spirits of the 
boards, that took the life out of him, and resolved it into 
one shaking system of laughter, — were all farce performers. 
It may have been some considerations such as these, or it 
may have been a combination of them, which we call 
accidents, that induced him to try his hand at Farce. 
And it was on his own principles that he resolved to 
write it. He could never be servile. He could never, as 
we before said, be a mere parasite of the public. He formed 



61 

his opinion of the proper, and wrote after his own opinion. 
He endeavoured to make his Farce the trine he considered 
it ought to be — an airy nothing; fretting with impor- 
tance, and exhausting itself in sound and fury. 

He called it Mr. H., and it turns on the trouble and 
mortification, which an opulent young spark encounters, 
through having a disagreeable name. He comes forward 
as an unmarried gentleman, with servants and all kinds of 
attractions, save his name. This name is Hogsflesh, which he 
conceals under its initial letter. A multitude of surmises 
are formed before it is known, and as this mystery is 
believed to indicate high rank, all sorts of dignities are 
conferred on him. The ladies court him, rivals hate him ; 
and, when in the midst of a brilliant assembly, he blurts 
out his real name, all fall away from him, as if he had 
been suddenly turned into a real grunter. The upshot is 
that Hogsflesh gets changed by the succession of an estate 
into Bacon, and the disgusted become again sudden com- 
petitors for the hands and the fortune of the late Mr. H. 

The matter of this is flimsy enough, but so Lamb 
intended it to be. The thin veil, covering as little as possible. 
was his idea of perfection in a farce. Talfourd says, " this 
verbal banter and watery collision of the pale reflexions of 
words could not succeed on a stage which had begun to 
require interest, moral or immoral, to be interwoven with 
the web of all its actions, which no longer rejoiced in the 
riot of animal spirits and careless gaiety ; which no longer 
permitted wit to take the sting from evil, as well as the 
load from care ; but infected even its prince of rakes. 
Charles Surface, with a cant of sentiment." This may be 



62 

part of the reason why Mr. H. was doomed, like Lamb's 
former effort, to condemnation. However, it attained 
what John Woodvil failed to attain — it was accepted by 
Drury Lane, and brought out in December 1806. Elliston, 
one of Lamb's chief favorites, undertook the principal 
character. The house was crammed. Lamb and his 
sister were in the pit. The first act went off pretty well, 
but the second act betrayed a lagging interest, and when 
the overcharging of the farce exploded in such a dis- 
appointing upshot as Hogsflesh, the audience denounced 
it with groans and hisses, in which Lamb himself 
joined. He afterwards confessed to Wordsworth that 
"John Bull must have solider fare than a letter." 
Though Lamb took his ill-success philosophically, and he 
had a clear idea how accidental the fate of the best pieces 
is at first, yet his hopeful and somewhat sanguine nature 
induced him to fill the chasm of uncertainty with a host 
of flattering sprites. His conversations, his correspon- 
dence about the time of its appearance, were all on Mr. 
H. How he should print his orders, whether Boxes 
on the presentation tickets should be printed in 
Honian or Old English, and what money he would get 
by the success. , " Our conversations naturally fell upon 
pieces," he writes to Wordsworth, after an interview 
with Tobin — " different sorts of pieces — which is 
the best way of offering a piece, how far the caprice of 
managers is an obstacle in the way of a piece, how to 
judge of the merits of a piece, how long a piece may 
remain in the hands of the managers before it is acted." 
Here all the psychological adventures of a Farce are as 



63 

seriously debated, and were, for the time, as important to 
Lamb as the undertaking of a great war is to a statesman. 
After the trial, he wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt. "Mr. H. 
came out last night, and failed. I know you'll be sorry, 
but never mind. We are determined not to be cast down." 
To "Words worth he writes, "After all, we had rather it 
should have succeeded. A hundred hisses (hang the 
word I write it like kisses — how different) — a hundred 
hisses outweigh a thousand claps. . , But non cuivis 
contigit adire Corinthum" To Manning he writes, " I 
suppose you know my farce was damned. The noise still 
rings in my ears. Tv T as you ever in the pillory 1 — being 
damned is something like that. . . . However, I have 
been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty 
free with me on that occasion. Hang 'em how they 
hissed ! it was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic 
yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring 
something like bears, mows and mops like apes, some- 
times snakes, that hissed me into madness, 'Twas like 
St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God 
should give his favorite children, men, mouths to speak 
with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to 
natter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, 
to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that 
they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, 
hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath 
through them ]ike distillations of aspic poison, to asperse 
and villify the innocent labours of their fellow creatures, 
who are desirous to please them. Heaven be pleased to 
make the teeth rot out of them all therefore. Make them 



64 

a reproach ; and all that pass by them to loll out their 
tongues at them. Blind mouths, as Milton somewhere 
calls them." 

This work of the year 1806 was succeeded by a longer 
interval of literary inaction than ever. From this date to 
1820, a period of no less than fourteen years, which com- 
prised Lamb's life betw r een the age of 31 and 45, the 
very hey-day of existence, he produced no work of any 
importance. His sister published two volumes ; one 
called Tales from Shakspere, the other Mrs. Leicester's 
School. To each of these Lamb contributed. Six of the 
Shakspere tales are by him, and three of those in the 
other volume. In 1810, he published his Specimens 
from the Old Dramatists. But these form no part of his 
reputation. The Specimens only evince the correct taste 
and judgment of the selector, and were useful in 
acquainting the public, that wished for such knowledge, 
what substance and force there were in the old neglected 
literature ; and how feeble and slip-sloppy modern popular 
writing appeared beside some of this robust and natural 
language. What Percy is supposed to have effected by 
means of our old Ballad literature, Lamb wished to 
effect by means of our old Dramatic literature. He 
wished to cleanse style from its expansions, to collect it, 
and brace it. He had himself drawn hints, and gleaned 
thought of the very purest kind from those old pages. He 
wished that the young students of England, instead of 
learning the use of their fine language by means of 
Grammatical technicals, Lectures on the Study of Words, 
Collections of Synonyms, and Hints on Composition, 



65 

should rather pursue the language over its haunts, track 
it out, and grow acquainted with it in its native recesses. 
The lecture room is a poor substitute for the closet to 
those who really mean to work with the best tools — 
indeed the best tools can never be obtained there. Lamb 
offered these specimens as a sample of what the great 
stock contained, and the portable nature of the offering. 
as well as its sound quality, made it a very acceptable 
present. But it was not Lamb's mind that was seen in it. 
It was only Lamb's common place book. 

The whole of the Specimens were chosen from 
Shakspere's contemporaries, so that they very effectively 
represent the genius of the first, and perhaps greatest of 
our literary eras. Attached to the Specimens, Lamb sub- 
joined remarks and illustrations ; and among these one 
which became a source of much annoyance to him. Ford 
was an especial favorite with Lamb. Indeed, the praise 
which he bestows on this, by no means first class dramatist, 
is, we think, over abundant. Lord is often harsh, 
without being terse ; and abrupt, without being weighty. 
The single greatness which has been claimed for him is 
pathos : but even this is sometimes strained, till it loses 
the softness of its quality, and becomes muling. Lamb's 
super-appreciation led him into what we think extrava- 
gance in his praise of the last scenes of the Broken Heart. 
This tragedy is founded on a kind of Montague and 
Capulet family quarrel in Sparta, which the King of 
Sparta attempts to heal, after the Borneo and Juliet fashion, 
by persuading a marriage between the son and daughter of 
the two hostile houses. This marriage goes no farther 

F 



than betrothal, and the voting gentleman is enraged to see 
his affianced bride carried off by a richer rival, through 
the intrigues of the brother of the young Juliet, who 
bears the family hatred to the Romeo. All this, to our 
mind, Shakspere, in his similar plot, has managed with 
such supreme superiority, that it is only for the sake of 
clearness, that we have used his names to signify Ford's 
characters. At this point, Shakspere and Ford part. 
The brother of the Juliet loves and marries Calantha, the 
King's daughter ; and the Romeo, to revenge the injury 
this brother (Ithocles) has done him, murders him, 
and the Juliet goes mad, and starves herself to death. 
Now Ford has represented Calantha, the King's daughter, 
as the woe-begone of his piece — the Broken Heart ; 
when really the Juliet is the one who suffers those dis- 
appointments and persecutions, which would be most 
appropriate to such suffering. And in the last scenes, 
which have been often extravagantly held up as instances 
of sublime pathos, Ford has represented Calantha dancing 
at a wedding between the friend of the Juliet's brother and 
the sister of the Romeo, and while dancing a messenger 
comes to inform her of the death of Juliet. She still con- 
tinues dancing, and calls for a brisker measure. A second 
messenger informs her of the sudden death of her father, 
by which event she becomes queen. She takes no notice, 
but bids the merriment increase. A third message informs 
her that Ithocles her husband has been murdered by the 
Romeo. This, no more than the former events, moves her. 
She still continues the rejoicings, as if nothing had happened 
But afterwards it appears that this was simulation. The 



67 

blows fell in their proper places, with proper effects. But 
she retained calmness till she had finished with the world, 
and then confesses : — 

* ■ Oh my lords, 
I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture, 
When one news straight, came huddling on another, 

Of death, and death, and death ! still I danced forward ; 
But it struck home, and here, and in an instant- 
Be such mere woman, who, with shrieks and outcries, 
Can vow a present end to all their sorrows, 
Yet live to count new pleasures, and outlive them ; 
They are the silent griefs which cut the heart strings, 
Let me die smiling." 

On this passage Lamb made the following remark : — " I 
do not know where to find in any play a catastrophe so 
grand, so solemn, and so surprising as in this. This is 
indeed, according to Milton, to describe high passions and 
high actions. The fortitude of the Spartan boy, who let 
a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died, without 
expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dila- 
ceration of the spirit and exenteration of the inmost 
mind, which Calantha, with a holy violence against her 
nature, keeps closely covered, till the last duties of a wife 
and a queen are fulfilled. Stories of martyrdom are but 
of chains and the stake ; a little bodily suffering. . . 
What a noble thing is the soul in its strength and in its 
weaknesses. Who would be less weak than Calantha] 
TTho can be so strong 1 The expression of this trans- 
cendent scene almost bears us in imagination to Calvary 
and the Cross ; and we seem to perceive some analogy 
between the scenical sufferings, which we are here con- 
templating, and the real agonies of that final completion, 



68 

to which we dare no more than hint a reference." Weber, 
in editing Ford, quoted this note, and when the Edition 
came under the eye of G-ifFord, who reviewed Weber's 
book in the Quarterly, the savage critic elevated his 
poison-teeth, and bit with all his might. " He has 
polluted his pages," he goes on to say, "with the blas- 
phemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, once published 
some detached scenes of the Broken Heart. For this 
unfortunate creature, every feeling mind will find an 
apology in his calamitous situation." Now there has 
never been a more determined hater than William Gifford. 
But though essentially a literary man, the whole gist and 
essence of his hate sprung from political opinion. It 
was not bad books and bad writers that he hated ; but 
Whigs and Radicals. These could do no right \ and 
against these he continued to pour all the malice that had 
been suddenly dammed up by the discontinuance of the 
Antijacobin. Between the death of the Antijacobin and 
the commencement of the Quarterly — a period of eleven 
years — he buried himself among the old dramatists, and 
vented his ill-humour in contemptuous attacks on former 
editors of Jon son and Massinger. But on the establish- 
ment of the Quarterly, he resolved to continue what the 
Antijacobin had begun, and no critic ever came to the 
task with fangs more eager to devour. As the king can 
do no wrong, the Radical could do no right. Every poem 
or chimney corner tale, every pamphlet, every accidental 
opinion, every careless expression, that had a Liberal 
origin, was taken into custody by this self-constituted 
constable, and put in the stocks. Radicals were to him 



69 

what a red rag is to a bull, or the pert school-boy to the 
Domine, or a tawdry sharp-tongued cook to a self-important 
mistress. Words were only a weak vehicle to express his 
abhorrence. He considered Radical ideas and Atheism as 
one and the same thing. A notion hostile to Tory 
government was a covert design to seize Tory estates, and 
divide them among radical tailors and shoemakers. Mr, 
Shelburn or Mr. Perceval could not be criticised without 
a design on the Constitution. The remarks of the 
Quarterly, in other words of Gifford, on Hazlitt, Hunt, 
Keats, Shelley seem now as abominable libels as ever were 
penned, and as deserving of damages as anything that ever 
had to bear the scrutiny, and suffer the penalty of the 
law. Yet these articles passed as only deserved, when it 
was a libel even to speak the truth, and when one of these 
authors was subjected to two years' imprisonment for calling 
the patched, padded, wigged, and rouged Regent an 
" Adonis of fifty." But it was the reign of Toryism. It 
was Toryism triumphant. It was when Toryism held 
such repute and power as it never held before, and is never 
likely to hold again. It was Toryism in its natural state, 
when it had no fears to consult, before it expressed its 
opinions ; no dread of reactionary masses, resisting its 
severities, and cutting off its power; no notion of the 
co min g revolution, which was about to change its confi- 
dence, and outspoken recklessness into fear, caution, and 
reserve. It could bully, and jmnish, and slander its 
enemies to their ruin. It did so ; and no one belonging to 
the party used these offensive weapons so eagerly as 
William Gifford. A narrow but exceedingly acute mind, 



70 

a wretched temper, a poor constitution, which a student's 
life had enfeebled, a chronic asthma, a youth of dependence, 
which had been befriended and brought up to indepen- 
dence by Tory patrons, had tended to bend his mind in 
one direction only. It knew no more of freedom than a 
hyena whelped in a menagerie. It snapped at everything 
that was not barred and fastened like itself. It took 
freedom for the unnatural condition, and rovers that 
approached its confinement as proper prey. 

Moreover, Toryism was then, as it had been in Pitt's 
days, far in the minority with respect to ability. Three 
parts of the cleverness and genius of the age were radical. 
As name by name grew renowned, it was found to be on 
the side that wished to throw wide the doors of Parliament ; 
to open offices to Catholics, and Dissenters; to allow 
bread to be purchased in the cheapest markets ; to expose 
the system of close corporations; and to hold out a friendly 
hand to Ireland, by enacting better land laws, and hewing 
down its unchristian State Church. The Tories had obtained 
Southey and Coleridge by apostacy ; and Wordsworth, 
Scott, Wilson, Lockhart, Theodore Hook, Croker, and 
Canning by choice. Put these were but a feeble 
counterpoise against Pentham, Mill, Pyron, Campbell, 
Moore, Hunt, Hazlitt, Keats, Shelley, Montgomery, 
Wolcott, Land or, Lamb, Hallam, Godwin, Dr. Parr, 
Sydney Smith, Pobert Hall, John Eoster, Sir James 
Mackintosh. When GiiFord, writhing under his savage 
temper and his aching sides, looked at this array of 
enemies, and considered what a mere division was left him 
to grapple with an army, he might well bring to his aid 



71 

the sneaking advantage which was to be gained by calling 
base names and attributing scandalous motives. Open war- 
fare must be attended by defeat. He had but a forlorn hope 
to work with. The honorable passions were altogether of no 
value in such a case. But the host of dishonorable and 
vicious attributes might do something still. Hence to 
bring charges of miscreant, atheist, leveller, tub-orator, 
vermin, " unbeliever, cut-throat, dog," blasphemer, was 
to add to the petty forces a reserve that might be 
sufficient to hold the literary liberals at bay. These 
atrocious nick-names might damn their books : and turn 
the prudish part of society, and that part of society 
which exists on a rigid imitation of the prudes, from 
associating with such dangerous characters. This was the 
tactics of a generation. 

In those indefinite fictions, which are called honor 
and liigh-mindedness, it is considered impolitic, as well as 
somewhat base, to return a foul blow with a foul blow. 
Every one, but the actual combatants, thinks it the 
safest method of quieting an enemy, to return praise for 
calumny, the left cheek for the damaged right one. It is 
seldom, however, that the logic of this retort is appreciated 
within the ring. The rope, which separates the beholders 
from the pugilists, draws a strong line between their 
convictions. Gifford had accused Lamb of what society 
in general abhors. Lamb was not one that loved dispute, 
or cared much for retaliation in cases of harmless attack. 
But the malice of GifFord's blow was evident enough. Had 
it been in his power, the critic would have torn the India 
house clerk from place and livelihood. He had the will 



72 

to punish him for an indiscretion, as if lie committed 
burglary, or even murder. Gifford, who was born in 
poverty, had first been ship-boy, and afterwards appren- 
ticed to a shoemaker. To rise to such a position as that 
he then occupied, though by means of early assistance, was 
rare and admirable credit. It was an evidence of great 
ability, firmly directed to a meritorious end ; a triumph 
over obstacles, that is of everlasting example and benefit 
to well-directed minds. But society is made up of contra- 
dictions. It approves and promotes what it is perfectly 
willing to laugh at as a joke, and indeed holds as a welcome 
and approved subject for ridicule. That Gifford was a shoe- 
maker as well as a critic was really an addition to his merit ; 
and society acknowledged it to be so. Nevertheless, society 
was quite on tip-toe to jeer the cobler, as well as to flatter 
the critic ; and it cannot be much wondered at that Lamb 
avenged himself, as the slightest knowledge of mankind 
informed liim he was quite at liberty to do. 

Saint Crispin to Mk. Gifford. 

" All unadvised, and in an evil hour, 

Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft 
The lowly labours of the " gentle craft " 
For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour. 
All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power ; 
The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground ; 
And sweet content of mind is oftener found 
In cobler's parlour than in critic's bower. 
The sorest work is what doth cross the grain ; 
And better to this hour you had been plying 
The obsequious awl, with well-waxed finger flying, 
Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein .* 
Still teasing muses, which are still denying ; 
Making a stretching leather of your brain." 



73 

Tliere was not much wit or wisdom in this ; but it eased 
Lamb, and so did its duty. 

But unfortunately we have not yet done with the 
Quarterly. Twelve years after this attack of Gifford, 
Lamb received a milder blow, of the same kind, 
but a far more painful one, from his friend Southey. 
Year after year, the growth of liberal opinions had 
been noticed in the Quarterly with pangs and spasms 
of regret. The advancing evil was always surrounded by 
scouts and spies, and article after article was written to 
raise alarm against it. But whatever power might be 
in these desperate fear-breeders, they hardly ever reached 
their mark. The drift of popular feeling towards radical 
action, which they were intended to arrest, was never 
delayed for an instant. The force and persecution they 
advocated were remedies that even their own party dare 
only now use covertly ; and they only had the unsatisfac- 
tory effect of convincing bishops, rectors, and justices, 
whom nobody ever suspected of liberality. Nevertheless, 
the reviewers wrote on in desperation. Every radical 
meeting, or resolution, or movement, was held up to scorn 
for its absurdity, or to justice for its treason. There had 
been movements that had been put down by force. Troops 
had fired upon a mob, and charged with the bayonet, while 
it was listening to a John Bright of 1818. The indiscreet 
wife of the " Adonis of Sixty " had become the goddess of 
Radical faith • and the two parties had come to conflct on 
her trial for infidelity to a withered rake, and staked 
their supremacy upon its verdict. The Tory Premier — 
worried with the anxiety of his position, hounded here 



74 

and there by his own up-breaking party, disheartened with 
mistakes and unforseen issues, wretched with the sense of 
a capacity unequal to the demands upon it, writhing under 
the satire and sarcasm of a hundred hostile prints, and 
dreading the approaching day of reckoning—freed himself 
and his country by suicide. Yet all these signs of a coming 
crisis only inflamed the passions of those in power, only 
made them rail on their victims with less caution, and 
try to trample on them with a heavier foot. Leigh Hunt had 
been thus frequently treated, for he was an arch- offender. 
He had conducted one of the most influential weekly 
papers, and had been the victim of the Regent's petty 
revenge. Hazlitt, another of Lamb's boon friends, had 
been tortured with the same kind of misrepresentation as 
his friend Hunt ; and Lamb had been linked with these 
victims, and denounced in the Quarterly outbursts of anger. 
These he had borne. But when Southey — when his 
choice friend — when he, into whose bosom he had poured 
his literary secrets, and on whom he had been accustomed 
to look as his next dearest consolation after Coleridge — - 
when he turned against him, Lamb could hold back no 
longer. 

Southey was a man of whom as much good or as 
much evil might be said as you pleased ; and each 
character might be well supplied with instances. He had 
been an ultra liberal, he became an ultra tory. He had 
been a downright Socinian, he became a downright 
Churchman. He had held Jacobin notions, and made a 
hero of Wat Tyler ; he came at last to hold notions almost 
of Stuart malignity, to defend divine right and passive 



19 

obedience, and to advocate the use of force against those 
who did, as he had once done. On every change of opinion, 
nothing was more apparent than his dogmatism. Up to 
the age of twenty-five, society was a great conspiracy of 
the rich against the poor. After that age, society became 
a great conspiracy of the poor to rob the rich. Up to the 
age of twenty, the Athanasian creed and the Arminian 
doctrine were truths of universal obligation. From 
twenty to twenty-five, Socinus took place of Athanasius, 
and Priestley of Arminius. After twenty -five he returned 
with re-doubled zeal to the Church he had scorned and 
rejected. He chose and delighted to write on those 
subjects which had cut such antics in his own mind ; and 
he never wrote on them with one grain of toleration, or 
one misgiving on the durability of his last opinion. If he 
fell in with a liberal, the poor devil had no mercy to 
expect from Southey. He must be debarred from 
speaking, writing, or publishing. The law of libel and the 
law of treason must be construed to their basest letter, to 
put him down. If he fell in with a Catholic, there 
seemed nothing in human disabilities equal to counter- 
balance his disloyalty. He must be excluded from all 
offices of trust or emolument. He must be harrassed even 
for permission to think. He must be proscribed, and never 
permitted to join with an Anglican in any good work. 
The demand for emancipation was as reasonable as that a 
horse should ask to be relieved from the bit. The request 
to be released from damning the head of one's own religion 
w T as the stubborn wnckedness of men, wdio had hostile inten- 
tions on the country. If he fell in with a Unitarian, it was 



76 

as bad. The mob that sacked Priestley's house in 1791 were 
not a grain more intolerant than Southey, when he came 
across a follower of his old creed. The wickedness of Uni- 
tarian belief imparted its wickedness to all the actions — 
political or moral — of the believer. There was no persecution 
that could over-punish such offenders. No government 
could be secure while such were part of its construction. 
If he encountered what he called an infidel, it was worst 
of all. Here all the crimes of human nature centred. It 
was liberalism carried out to the end it would always 
ultimately reach. It was a present example of the future 
nation, should the ideas of radicals over-ride those of 
tories. The bond of the social system and the bond of 
belief were only distinctive conventions of the same 
thing. When the infidel appeared, he was only a 
forewarning of the havoc to come, a specimen, sent by 
heaven, to disgust its creatures with the advocates of 
Catholic Emancipation, Reform, and Free Trade. Yet 
never was any man more sensitive to hard words than 
Southey. He was once denounced in the House of Com- 
mons. "William Smith of Norwich cited Wat Tyler, and 
called him an apostate. The mettle of Southey was 
instantly aroused. " I brand you slanderer upon the 
forehead," he said. " Salve the scar as you will, it is 
ineffacable. It will go with you to your grave, and will 
outlast your epitaph." 

But with all this evil there w^as much in Southey 
to honor and imitate — much . that men, who have 
written far less offensive things, might glory in, if 
they could be attributed to them. His days were spent 



77 

in such industry as is rarely found in any of the com- 
pulsory occupations of life. A weaver or a coal miner 
had far more leisure than South ey permitted himself. 
His literary tasks, apart from his poetry, were those 
which required the greatest labour — History, Biography, 
Criticism — and usually meet with the least reward. Not- 
withstanding his popularity ; his income, on this account, 
was never equal to that of many other authors, who had 
little claim to anything beyond ability, and no claim to 
anything like his industry. But work was always his 
choice, and though, when we consider the sums that 
literature has realised since, he was poorly paid for it, he 
never turned real want from his door. No poor author 
applied to Southey for aid without receiving attention, 
often employment, and oftener still relief. The hard earned 
produce of his pen was freely bestowed. Many weak and 
ignorant people, who believed that they were poets 
because they could tack rhymes together, applied to 
Southey for his help to launch their compositions, and to 
solicit the world in their behalf. There could have been 
no unkindness in repelling all such solicitations, and 
consigning them over to the benevolent difficulties of their 
own exertions, to secure what reputation they deserved. 
Southey did not do so. In two instances, he came forward 
and pleaded for two rhymsters of this class. Mary 
Colling, described as a servant ; and John Jones, as an 
old servant, were, by Southey's intercession, enabled to 
come before the world as respectable types of the class, 
prodigy ; and were gainers by his assistance. When 
Kirke White published his volume of poems at the age of 



78 

seventeen, for the purpose of procuring the means of study, 

they were sneered at in the Monthly Review, and were 

nearly useless to their author. The volume fell into the 

hands of Southey, and while the boy was smarting under 

the rebuke of his critics, he wrote to him, and encouraged 

him in his resolution, which led to "White going to 

Cambridge. When death overtook the youth, in midst 

of success, and while he was daily adding hope to hope, 

Southey undertook his life, and the editorship of his 

remains. He did this wholly from sympathy. He 

would never receive reward from it, though the work 

went through edition after edition, and was highly 

profitable to the relatives of White. On the tablet, which 

an American erected to White's memory, Southey is not 

forgotten. 

" Foremost to mourn was generous Southey seen, 
He told the tale, and showed what White had been. " 

When Coleridge and his wife parted, Southey took the 
wife in, and contributed to bring up the children of his 
friend. He did the same to the wife of Lovell, his other early 
friend. His conduct to the relatives of Chatterton was 
not less benevolent and exemplary than in the case of 
Kirke White. Herbert Croft, who afterwards became a 
clergyman of the Church of England, obtained by sur- 
reptitious means, from Chatterton's mother, all his letters 
and remains. These documents, which the deceiver had 
only borrowed for a few hours to read over, he kept several 
months, copied them, and published them, and rewarded 
the relatives of Chatterton with £10. This abominable 
transaction raised the indignation of Southey; and, in 



79 

conjunction with Joseph Cottle, they, without any 
remuneration, published an Edition of Chatterton's works, 
for the benefit of his sister, his only remaining relative, by 
which £300 accrued to her. 

Even in those parts of his character which appear 
most blamable, there was a moderating principle at work. 
Though accident has made them look so insincere, his, 
worst enemies have never accused him of insincerity ; and 
had he been less overbearing in his language, nobody 
would have thought it wrong that the manhood of his 
judgment should differ from its infancy. 

The article in the Quarterly, which separated Lamb 
and Southey for a few weeks, was entitled The Progress 
of Infidelity. The irritation which the Tory party felt at 
their daily losses, and the grim forebodings of a season of 
Whig and Radical retaliation, for all the wrongs they had 
suffered at the hands of a government, which had been in 
existence upwards of sixty years, was the primary cause of 
the article. There was no hope left but the feeble one of 
securing the unconfirmed by a miserable picture of 
what Infidelity had been wherever it had been tried ; and 
gliding from this general view to that particular view, 
which associated the political party of progress with 
Deists and Atheists. "When, therefore, Southey, after a. 
clever review of the subject, and an especial history of one 
of the most absurd of the Infidel sects of the French 
Revolution, turned upon the English part of the subject, 
and stated that the word Liberal expressed " whatever is 
detestable in principle, and flagitious in conduct," and that 
the newspaper organs of these opinions aimed at the 



80 

" destruction of the principles on which public prosperity 
and private happiness are founded/' and that some excited 
insurrection, some mingled filth with blasphemy — when 
"after this gloomy introduction Southey brought the 
writings of his old friend forward as a " book which wants 
only a sounder religious feeling to be as delightful as it is 
original," Lamb felt himself mixed up with the group of 
Infidels, on whom Southey had been pouring all the lava 
of his pen — Paine, Yoltaire, Mirabeau, D'Alembert, 
Lepaux, Helvetius, Rousseau, Hume. Lamb would not 
have shrunk at the friendship of some of these — nay he 
would have considered it honor. But as Southey used 
them, they became whips to flagelate, and their alliance 
became disgrace. Lamb felt only the intention, and it 
was the intention he replied to. But perhaps after all, 
Lamb w^ould never ha.ve noticed the attack had it not 
involved an attack on another of Lamb's friends. Southey 
cited one of Lamb's Essays, in which he had shown that 
fear in children is not excited by goblin tales, or foolish 
pictures ; but is inherent in our nature. He had instanced 
the example of one of Leigh Hunt's children, who had 
been brought up " with the most scrupulous exclusion of 
every taint of superstition, and was never allowed to hear 
of goblin or apparition, or be told distressing stories," and 
yet the world of fear was as wide to this boy as to the most 
goblin-crammecl of his age. " This poor child," said Southey, 
" instead of being trained up in the way he should go, had 
been bred in the ways of modem philosophy; . . . 
care had been taken that -he should not pray to God, nor 
lie down at night in reliance upon his good providence." 



81 

In his reply Lamb asks what Southey refers to in 
describing Elia as a book needing a sounder religious 
feeling. "With no further explanation, what must your 
readers conjecture but that my little volume is some 
vehicle for heresy or infidelity. . . If in either of 
papers (Saying Grace and The New Year,) I have been 
betrayed into some levities, — not affronting the sanctuary, 
but glancing perhaps at some of the outskirts and extreme 
edges, the debateable land between holy and profane 
regions — (for the admixture of man's inventions, twisting 
themselves with the name of religion itself, has artfully 
made it difficult to touch even the alloy without, in some 
men's estimation, soiling the fine gold) — if I have sported 
between the purlieus of serious matter — it was, I dare say, 
a humour — be not startled, sir — which I have unwittingly 
derived from yourself. You have all your life been 
making a jest of the devil. Not of the scriptural meaning 
of that dark essence — personal or allegorical ; for the 
nature is nowhere plainly delivered. I acquit you of 
intentional irreverence. But indeed you have been 
wonderfully free with, and been mighty pleasant upon the 
popular idea and attributes of him. . . You have 
flattered him in prose : you have chanted him in goodly 
odes. You have been his jester : volunteer Laureat, and 
self-elected Court Poet to Beelzebub. . . You have 
never ridiculed, I believe, what you thought to be religion, 
but you are always girding at what some pious but 
perhaps mistaken folks think to be so. " " It is an error," he 
proceeds to say in a farther paragraph, " more particularly 
incident to persons of the correctest principles and habits 

G 



82 

to seclude themselves from tlie rest of mankind, as from 
another species, and form knots and clubs. The best 
people herding thus exclusively are in danger of con- 
tracting a narrowness. . . If all the good people were 
to ship themselves off to Terra Incognita, what, in 
humanity's name, is to become of the refuse 1 ? . 
Instead of mixing with the Infidel and the Freethinker — 
in the room of opening a negotiation to try at least to find 
out at which gate the error entered — they huddle close 
together in a weak fear of infection." Lamb then takes 
exception to some of the arguments of South ey, and shows 
their fallacy. He finishes a rather long letter with a 
defence of the characters of Hunt and Hazlitt ; and, by 
means of a complaint on the discourtesy and impolicy of 
the Church, shows that it is itself creating dissenters and 
disbelievers ; by exhibiting, on every occasion, a keener 
solicitude after fees and revenues than the consolation of 
the poor and ignorant. 

But even this moderate remonstrance, as it may be 
called, rather than angry retaliation, pained Lamb acutely 
after he had published it. Southey, so apt to be inflamed 
at slight oppositions, knew his old friend too well to be 
exasperated. " On my part," he says, " there was not even 
a momentary feeling of anger. I was very much surprised 
and grieved ; because I knew how much he would condemn 
himself, and yet no resentful letter was ever written less 
offensively. His gentle nature may be seen in it through- 
out." A month afterwards Southey was in London, and 
wrote to Lamb to ask permission to call. It was all 
Lamb wanted to restore himself to himself again. " The 



83 

kindness of your note/' lie replies, "'-has melted away the 
mist which was upon me. I have been fighting against a 
shadow. That accursed Q. E. had vexed me by a 
gratuitous speaking of its own knowledge, that the 
Confessions of a Drunkard was a genuine description of 
the state of the writer. Little things that are not ill 
meant may produce much ill. That might have injured 
me alive and dead. I am in a public of5.ce, and my life 
is insured. . . I wish both magazine and review at 
the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, 
and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so ; for 
the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made 
her uneasy ever since." Would that all quarrels had so 
much reason in their beginning, and so much wisdom in 
their end. 

In order to get rid of Lamb's small amount of dispute 
and anger at once, and to clear the evil passions away, we 
have rather anticipated matters of importance, in leaping 
from 1811 to 1823. In the meantime Elia had been 
begun, and the first series published ; and it was when 
thus before the world that it had become matter for 
Southey's hard remark. But it is necessary to speak 
somewhat more in detail of this masterpiece. 

Lamb was thus plodding over the best years of his 
life without any very active stir in any particular 
direction. At first he had thought that poetry was the 
direction towards which his abilities pointed, and we have 
seen how lie tried himself. But he soon became sensible, 
that when he matched his verses against those of his 
immediate friends, he was last ; — that the bold dashing 



84 

rush of language, which poetry often demands, did not 
seem allied to a nature that seldom rose to any heat, but 
kept an equable temperature, even In the midst of the 
violent passions that often glowed up around it. Some 
authors on trial will not take hints. However boldly the 
world tells them that their wares are not wanted, they 
still persevere; and often, like unscrupulous tradesmen, 
get customers through sheer impudence, and succeed in 
making readers of those indifferent idlers, who at first were 
determined in believing they did not want to read. Much 
indeed of the reputation of the present age is of this kind. 
The republic of letters, as it is called, requires as many and 
as particular introductions as a new aspirant for aristo- 
cratic connections fresh from the counter requires, before 
he is admitted into exclusive society. A highly artificial 
guard of literary apprentices, journeymen, clerks, and fore- 
men surround its chief organs; and jealousy, in the inverse 
proportion to ability, keeps back any likely candidate for dis- 
tinction as long as possible. It was not a part of Lamb's 
nature to work hard for renown, nor did he put much value 
on popular opinion. But he seemed to set a high value on a 
little money derived from the brain. Though it might be 
only as farthings compared with gold to what he received 
from Leadenhall, yet, in his mind, it would reverse itself, 
and be as gold compared with farthings in his secret 
estimation. Had he had half the solicitude and perse- 
verance of inferior men, he might have reached a name 
through poetry. But the first check was enough. 
He declined to dispute the opinion of the world, and 
for twenty-three years he had written nothing new, 



88 

nothing that lie thought fit for separate publication in 
poetry. 

His next attempt, as we saw, was a short tale. But 
the judgment, which had so coldly received his poetry, 
did not warm up sufficiently oyer Rosamond Gray to 
induce him to believe in romance as the road he was to 
travel. The same kind of trial and the same kind of 
conviction attended his attempts at Tragedy and Farce. 
One trial in each sufficed to put him down, though 
the examples of Literature, like those of Oratory, show us 
that first failures are often only £>reparations for ultimate 
masterly success ; and that first successes are even more 
frequently the preludes to an after succession of failures. 
In the meanvvdiile he kept up correspondence with a small 
number of his first and after friends. This correspondence 
is entitled to rank with his works, for it is the pouring forth 
of the collected graces of his mind. His pleasant egotism, 
his lively confessions, his playful humours, his airy appre- 
ciations, the genial light he throws on all he touches, and 
the elegant and fortunate choice of language which he 
uses, are all of that kind • which, as they entirely reflect 
the author's mind, and accomplish without effort, and 
perfectly accomplish what they aim at, are a work of genius. 

In the year 1804, Lamb became acquainted with 
Hazlitt. This remarkable type of one feature of the pre- 
reform era was then halting between Painting and 
Literature. His mind was one of that class which can 
take nothing moderately. Its desires, its apprehensions, 
its suspicions, its angers, its hatreds were all on a great 
scale. Ardent to the very verge of prudence, hopeful to 



86 

the boundary of possibility; a keen lover, and a keen 
hater ; boiling with rage at authorities and institutions, 
which he thought detrimental ; merciless to those who 
were the representatives of those authorities, and the 
props of those institutions ; galled by the gall that was 
spurted on him, — lie was conscious that his powers were 
unappreciated and attacked, because he supported opinions 
which no effort of his enabled him to think otherwise 
than right. Had he had less confidence, or had his 
opinions been swayed by self-interest rather than general 
interest, he knew that he might have been honored and 
prosperous. But nature had formed him of material too 
hard and tough to be swayed and bent easily. Like many 
others of his clay, he considered himself " cabin'd, cribbed, 
confined, bound in " by Tory machinations, in order that 
Tories might hold power, and absorb all the profitable 
places of government. He considered that the vaunted 
constitution of England was worn away, and that the 
delusion of its name only was left; like the Senate of 
Rome under Tiberius, and the Cortez of Spain under 
Charles V. But not only did he feel thus ardently on his 
own part, but he was angry, impatient, and disgusted 
when he could not make others feel like him. There was 
corruption, or cowardice, or truckling weakness in every 
one who was luke-warm, where he was at fever heat ; or 
who supported what he wished to overthrow. He had 
started in life as a painter. But he started with the 
mind we have described — a mind that might have 
depicted another Last Judgment, or another Descent from 
the Cross, had it possessed but a little more continence 



87 

and patience. He devoured beauty. Wherever it came, 
and whence soever it came, it shot electric sensations 
through his system. The female face, a bare plain, rolling 
hills, drowsy woods, serene mountains — wherever beauty 

existed, or could he made to live, the phantom caught his 
enthusiastic mind, and threw it into temporary madness. 
But this acute appreciation and greedy appetite were their 
own destroyers. He saw all the magnificence he looked on in 
all its magnificence at once. Had his mind been slower, had 
it taken time to understand, had it been capable of 
denying itself, and been obliged to labour over the 
exquisite tenuities of perfection, he might have been a 
Rubens or a Michael Angelo. But this was wanting in 
him. His mind was far ahead of his hand. What his 
eye conveyed so rapidly to his brain, his brain refused to 
convey with the same rapidity to his muscles. His work 
on canvass looked to him but a vague caricature of what 
was painted within. He attempted figures. But nature 
that is incapable of ungainfulness, or mistake, or mis- 
complexion, seemed to leave nothing else to his brush. He 
turned grace into awkwardness, ease into constraint, flesh 
and blood into polluted disease. He often, we are told, 
after he had proceeded to some length with a work, became 
suddenly dissatisfied with it. He scowled at it. gnashed his 
teeth, and slashed it into fibre. He tried landscape. But 
the tame yellows and whites are not more inadequate to 
represent the blaze of the sun than what he drew was 
adequate to represent what he conceived. He turned 
to portraiture. It was the same. The loveliness of 
women and the manliness of men fled from his touch. 



88 

He knew what Vandyke, and Holbein, and Reynolds, 
and Gainsborough had done, and he was abashed. He 
could not believe his clumsy hand would ever throw 
off its weight, and spring at the inspiration of his 
mind into color, expression, ease, and life. His too 
ardent and too complete appreciations threw him into 
mistrusts. A cooler and a duller man would have 
raised himself to the Presidentship of the Academy with 
half his ability. As it was, Hazlitt grew discontented, 
and tried to overcome the unsatisfactory uses of his pencil 
with his pen. He began to put down the ideas of what 
is beautiful and right upon paper. He found this, even in 
the beginning, more compliant than the pencil had been. 
It was just after he had written his first work on the 
Principles of Human Action, that Lamb became 
acquainted with him ; and nearly the last painting he 
executed was a portrait of Lamb. 

Hazlitt was a Unitarian. His father had been a 
Unitarian minister. Lamb was a Unitarian, and Coleridge 
was then lapsing from Unitarian to Anglican. This 
unity of religious sentiment had established a kind of 
free-masonry between them, and Hazlitt had the further 
welcome to Lamb in being an unqualified admirer of 
Coleridge. He had heard the dreamy philosopher preach. 
He had walked ten miles to hear the sermon, and had sat 
under it, entranced with all the visions of his enthusiastic 
nature, warm with youth, and tingling with hope. Hazlitt 
thus came to Lamb like an ambassador from a great 
potentate. He could not have brought welcomer 
credentials. Friendship began at once. It had no pro- 



89 

cesses and inductions to undergo. The stranger was 
received as a brother and a peer. 

Lamb, however, could never appreciate Hazlitt's 
politics. It vras not that there vras any particular 
difference in their essentials ; but they assumed a vast 
difference in their expression. Lamb vras quiet and jokey* 
over matters that went like harrows through the 
indignation of Eazlitt. Where Lamb looked on evil as an 
inevitable blot, or at least a hardened exeresence, Hazlitt 
viewed it as a disease, generated by neglect and 
indifference. To be passive under removable injuries was 
to him criminal, to Lamb it was often prudence. Ee had 
been brought up with the idea that men were of two 
classes • those that devour, and those that are devoured. 
If you are born among the class that devour, you have 
nothing to do but to keep your prey properly penned and 
shackled. If you are born among the latter unfortunates, 
it is your duty to resist the shackles and the teeth to the 
utmost. He believed that one-tenth of society preyed 
upon the other nine-tenths. He found himself with the 
victims, and he was impatient whenever he saw a fellow- 
victim contemplate the fangs and ravenous appetites of 
their devourers with patience. The want of patience, as 
we said, drove an incipient Angelo from the brush. The 
want of patience often estranged Eazlitt from his best 
friends, and handed to his worst enemies the sharpest 
weapons that they used in order to torture him. 

Few of Hazlitt's friends remained so firmly by him as 
Lamb. Though their minds were in texture so widely- 
different, there was a similarity in taste between the two 



90 

tliat linked tliem together, and destroyed all other 
estrangements. Hazlitt would often be violent or sullen ; 
violent in conjuring up wrongs, or in letting his fancy 
loose over their enormity \ sullen when Lamb coldly 
checked his inflamed fancy with a dry joke. But that 
desire after beauty, that over-estimation of it, and over- 
delight in it, which had chased him from the easel, 
loosened his tongue with eloquence in criticising art. 
There he pounced with unerring power on the genius of a 
picture, and described it with a glow akin to his feeling. 
Lamb was hardly less devoted. But he selected beauties, 
and his knowledge of the art was limited, compared with 
that of Hazlitt. He was only the more delighted to hear 
his friend expatiate. He felt himself with an informing 
spirit, when such canvass as that which Raphael, Leonardo, 
or Titian has covered was the subject of appeal. Hazlitt 
threw open the doors of the painting, and every separate 
beauty walked forth. He glowed with words almost 
equal to the colors they described. He traced their 
curves and lines in language that seemed to bend and 
sweep under the folds of its subjects. The heart and soul 
accompanied the describer, and gave such life to the 
discourse that every listener felt his knowledge grow 
under it. Lamb has admirably rendered some of the 
lessons of this delightful schooling in his Paper on the 
barrenness of Imagination in the Productions of Modern 
Art. 

There was another point on which the two friends 
were as hearty, and even more closely conjoined. Hazlitt's 
ripe sense of beauty, and constant search for it, had, when 



91 

he took to literature, driven Mm to our old poets. 
Among them he found the same kind of high thought, 
boldly and satisfactorily rendered, as he found in the 
pictures of Titian and Leonardo. Ke plunged among the 
Elizabethan Dramatists — he gorged his taste with their 
overflowing thought — he sorted and arranged their 
excellent parts — he formed almost a philosophy out of 
them : and spurned the later and more artificial literature 
as the degenerate offscourings of one of the brightest eras 
of the human intellect. It was impossible for sympathy 
to be more perfect than that of Lamb on these points. 
He had no more doubt of the fact of such a conclusion 
than he had of the nearest way from the Temple to 
Leadenhall Street. Here all was clear, single, and hearty 
between them. 

In the year 1817, when the first signs of the coming 
on of a speedy determination of the political questions that 
divided the party in office from the party out of office 
began to show itself, Mr. Blackwood, the enterprising 
bookseller of Edinburgh, started his celebrated IMagazine. 
It was professedly undertaken to afford a mouth-piece to 
the Ultra Tories, similar in character to that which was 
enjoyed by the Whigs in the Edinburgh Review. The 
Edinburgh Review had originally derived its reputation 
from the youth and recklessness of [its writers. The dash, 
ease, and dare-devil, reck-nothing character of their 
articles had amused a generation of readers, at the expense 
of authors who formed perhaps the thousandth part of 
that generation. Somebody must suffer was their motto, 
it matters not who, since the suffering of one will be the 



92 

amusement of a thousand. The artifices which sportsmen 
exercise against foxes were employed against poets and 
Tory-politicians. The hounds were always out ; and 
some unfortunate fox was always breaking cover for the 
amusement of the field. Banter, sarcasm, argument 
dwindling into farce, and facetiousness curdling into 
irony had long been the weapons of an unbearable 
warfare ; when Blackwood came out to render a Boland 
for the Oliver. The supplies for the enterprise were 
undertaken by the same kind of writers as had undertaken 
those of the Edinburgh. Young men fresh from College, 
with a sufficiency of learning, overflowing liveliness, 
unreined humour, unlimited powers of irritation, a keen 
scent for game, and ardent buoyancy in the pursuit of it ; 
with the remorse of the butcher, and the scruples of the 
hangman ; soon gave to the Whigs that kind of telling 
blows, which the "Whigs had inflicted on the Tories. Up 
to this time, Magazines had been stupid household 
articles, written to amuse the wife and daughters at 
home, while husbands were enjoying themselves in a more 
substantial manner abroad. They were made up of flat 
essays on the Virtues and the Fashions, wearisome 
apologues teaching some disagreeable maxim, a few dull 
pages of dissertation on the history of a castle or some 
historical site, or such questions as whether bachelors 
should be allowed to mix with married people ; and 
whether Maria was justified in rejecting Alexis, because 
he visited her in untidy garments. Let us not be too 
self-satisfied. The spirit of the old Magazines still survives ; 
but it has now sought refuge in the Family Herald, and 



93 

the London Journal, and is satisfied with Penny opinions, 
where of old it asked Two Shillings as its fee. This 
melancholy stuff was accompanied by the poetry of school- 
girls and clerks. The tale had not yet made its 
appearance, or at any rate only assumed the form of an 
expanded anecdote ; or a pure invention in the Old 
English Baron style. 

Blackwood reformed all this. Even he eschewed 
fiction at first, but the whining school of periodical 
literature vanished as soon as his magazine appeared. 
There were no more of the Eudosia Essays on Affectation, 
no more of the sentimentals of the drawing-room and 
school-room. Slaughter and the. fear of it, right and left, 
was then the first article of the new canon. Laughter at 
any price the next. The London Whigs and Radicals 
soon began to smart under the strokes of the young 
Edinburgh Tories. The Gentleman's Magazine and the 
two Monthlies were all old-fashioned dealers in spiritless 
weakness, provided for the weak. Their powers against 
Blackwood were those of sparrows against kites. They 
fought shy of the formidable enemy ; and for three years, 
Blackwood ruled supreme in monthly literature. The 
first opponent that lifted an arm with any weight in it 
against the Edinburgh organ was the London Magazine. 
It was started without any political pretensions, and 
professed only a contempt for the mean food, which its 
forerunners supplied to a generation, which was growing 
dainty. But it soon appeared, from the character of 
editor and contributors, that it was a rival of Blackwood. 
Whomsoever Blackwood defiled, the London praised ; and 



94 

the praise of Blackwood was mostly countermanded in 
the London. Hazlitt became one of its chief supports, 
and Hazlitt had been a favorite target for the Blackwood 
arrows. It was not long before the two magazines got 
into mortal encounter, such an encounter as is seldom 
carried on between periodicals, for it led to a meeting 
between Scott the Editor of the London and a Blackwood 
supporter, which resulted in the death of Scott. 

It was this Magazine that Hazlitt invited Lamb to 
join. It seemed as if Lamb, having tried himself in all 
his favorite literary points with ill-success, had given up 
authorship altogether. And, but for the circumstances 
under which the London was started, and the persuasions 
of Hazlitt, it would have probably been so. Even as it 
was, he seemed reluctant to appear before the world again ; 
for the Magazine had been seven months in existence 
before he contributed to it. It was in August, 1820, that 
the first Essay of Elia appeared. It was the fine one 
recalling the faded glories and faded clerks of South Sea 
House — a leaf from the earliest of Lamb's world experiences. 
From this date, the articles were continued pretty 
regularly, month by month ; and it is a singular circum- 
stance, that though the best writings of Hazlitt, Lamb, 
Clare, and De Quincey appeared in this journal — writings 
which are eagerly bought now, and form part of the 
classics of a classic age of literature, the Magazine itself 
was a failure. It only lived five years. Yet it would be 
impossible to pick from any ten volumes of periodical 
matter, matter so full of genius, spirit, and thought as 
these ten volumes contain. It was in fact too far ahead 



95 

of the taste of the age. The refinement and delicate 
finish cf the articles were thrown away npon readers 
hardly emancipated from the drivelling of the Old 
Monthly and the Ladies' Museum The coarse boldness 
and clever abuse of Blackwood demande 1 neither taste nor 
reading to introduce it. It was at once tolerated, like 
those rough impudent fellows, who are sometimes the 
amusement of the company they insult, and are applauded - 
as much for what they do not know, as for what they know. 
The best writers in Blackwood, after a life of fifty years, 
are now. as it were, dead men ; while, in a life of five 
years, the London gave to the world four or five geniuses, 
whose writings the world will not v y let die. 

TVTien we look at these Essays which Lamb contri- 
buted to the London, as a whole, we are struck at once 
with their novelty and their familiarity — that which is 
common, and that which is uncommon in them. When 
Lamb tried himself at poetry, he evidently threw himself 
into a constrained position — he uttered by rule — he suc- 
cumbed to method. He was again trammel] ed by his 
admiration of Mackenzie, when he wrote Rosamond In 
John "Woo civil, the old Dramatists were continually 
admonishing him to be careful of his words, and weighty 
in his thought : and the radiant faces of Lilisron and 
Munden were constantly before him. pricking him on to 
fun and comicality, when he was writing Mr. H. Since 
those days of attempt and experiment, lie had ceased to 
expect gold from the crucible. He left his pen to wander 
up and down, noting, in a careless unmethodical way, 
whatever struck his fancy, and writing it in all the hurrv 



96 

of a half-hour, snatched from ledgers bursting with the 
wealth of India. All anxiety was gone. There was no 
more need to weigh paragraphs, or metres, or hunt down 
jokes, or unriddle events in an artificial manner. He 
took up his pen in the uppermost mood of the moment, 
and gossipped over the tattle and observation, which a few 
weeks had produced, to expectant correspondents. He 
had no more idea that there was any reputation to be 
won in this so-called gossip than that there was reputation 
in entering Teas, Chintzes, Silks, and Indigo in their 
proper folios. But it was this very absence of art, which 
the habit of twenty years, almost without literary 
interruption, had perfected, that was destined to become 
inimitable. Had Lamb trained, schooled, marked out, 
and checked his mind in these overflowings, he might 
have missed both his excellence and his singleness. "When 
Hazlitt persuaded him to resume authorship, and help the 
London, Lamb had thrown all his ambitions to the winds ; 
he had long ago subsided down to an ordinary mortal. 
His friends he saw above head, and he delighted to see 
them there. They were his stars, his constellations, and 
he was content to remain a mere observer of their stately 
movements. What then could he do to help the 
Magazine. He had no will to rub his intellect on the 
hard flint of popular coolness, till it struck out the fire of 
poetry. The days of poetry were over. They were 
linked with the excursive flights of Coleridge, and the 
warm hopes of a life just begun, now damp and mildewed. 
His other literary experiments held no more induce- 
ment to him than poetry. He was forty-five years old ; 



and the mind, instead of looking wakefully forward, was 

more inclined to turn reflectively 

purveyors of Magazines cannot be particular. A due 
quantity of digestible matter lias to be provided at a given 
moment, and the lighter the food, the more welcome, in 
many cases, to the devourers. Lamb's habit of writing 
down facts, fancies, bamboozlements, and dry humors to 
his correspondents was the only literary resource at hand ; 
and what if he considered the London some Manning or 
Wordsworth, and gossipped away to it as he was used to do 
to his living correspondents. Such off-hand stun might fill 
a few magazine pages well enough. He chose soundly. 
The idea was one of the happiest for literature. Without 
ambition, without object, without subject, vcichout care or 
pretension, Lamb sat down to write anything that would 
flow easily off his pen, and English Literature has 
obtained a book that has no second. It is unique. Art 
wrought from the absence of all art. The most subtle 
design growing spontaneously out of the neglect of all 
design. The mind entirely native, because neither 
presumption or care moved the writer to great expectations. 
When twenty-eight essays had been "written, the 
recommendation of all valuable opinion induced the 
publisher of the Magazine to collect them, and publish 
them separately. Their circulation in the Magazine did 
not hinder them of a hearty, if not a boisterous reception. 
They were not scrambled for and devoured, as the 
Waverly novels were at that time ; but they commanded 
a steady sale, which has been constantly increasing. 
Appreciation of the good, unless it be a good tale, or the 

H 



98 

work of one who lias already secured readers by popularity, 
is generally slow. It would be a keen satire on human 
intellect to set forth how many readers Aurora Floyd and 
Elia obtained in the same time. But we must be satisfied 
that Elia was cordially received at all. A new line of 
thought, and one so removed from ordinary direction, has 
seldom been better welcomed than Lamb's masterpiece. 
And here we may halt to consider why it is a masterpiece. 
The three stages, which intellect has generally passed, 
are those of Poetry, Philosophy, and Tale. Poetry preserves 
the facts of the past, Philosophy arranges them, and the 
Tale reproduces them. Poetry adds to what it preserves, 
Philosophy separates the true from the false, and the 
Tale affects to reproduce the true in a re-arranged order. 
Poetry adds mind to dry action, and gives it variation 
and color, Philosophy tries and proves it, and industriously 
discriminates the composition, the Tale gives a harmonious 
sequence to dry action, and in a manner doubles 
experience. Poetry digs the ore from the mine, loaded 
with extraneous matter, Philosophy separates the ore 
from the dross, the Tale coins the ore for circulation. 
But these three elements of the intellect, as they may be 
termed, may be combined. If such mere convenient 
classifications were mathematical, it is obvious that there 
would be only three changes on the three elements ; but if 
we take those elements partially, we get an infinitude of 
changes. Three of the important variations which these 
elemental forms undergo are History, Drama, and Essay. 
History is the combination of Philosophy with the Tale. 
The Drama is the combination of Poetry with the Tale, 



99 

and the Essay, of Poetry with Philosophy. We must not, 
therefore, expect the Essay till the more elementary 
forms of intellect have laid in a store of material with 
which it can work. Poetry must hare clone much, and 
Philosophy must have laid up a stock of its deductions. 
"Whenever this is accomplished, the Essay has all its 
materials ready, and we find it then mostly make its 
appearance. It becomes therefore the vehicle of the reason 
as well as of the imagination. It unmakes, and it remakes. 
But it does not do this after the manner of History, which is 
restricted to facts ) for it employs not only facts, but what 
might be facts \ not only what has been, but what might 
have been. It speculates as well as defines, and roves as 
often as it pursues a trodden track. The rules, which in a 
great measure make History and the Drama subordinate 
to codes, are here all thrown by. The Essay has no real 
superior authority, but is either trifling or profound ; 
either something very like Philosophy, or something very 
like Poetry ; some mere froth and yeast of the intellect, or 
something that gives out its very essence ; at one time a 
trifle to amuse, at another a sermon to correct, at another 
experience to warn, at another speculation to enlist, at 
another observation to direct us. 

/ The modern Essay had its origin in France, and 
there at once assumed a completeness and a greatness, 
which has perhaps never been equalled. There can be no 
more dispute that Montaigne is the greatest of Essayists, 
than that Shakspere is the greatest of Poets, or Columbus 
the greatest of geographical discoverers. Xever has a 
human being dared to open up his own mind, and lay 

L.tfC. 



100 

himself so nakedly forth to the world as Montaigne has 
done. He reserves nothing. The most pitiable thoughts 
and feelings are as frankly confessed as the most approved 
ones. Shakspere, Cervantes, Moliere give us an infinite 
variety of bad and good features in separate individuals. 
But the limits of their arts made them necessarily select. 
They could not waste on one individual that invaluable 
genius, which was equal to the prominent characteristics of 
many. Cervantes has approached the nearest to a 
thorough outer and inner delineation ; but even his 
exquisite art, as it works on the mind of Don Quixote, 
becomes tame and feeble beside the iinmeasured dissection 
of Montaigne. We almost tremble for ourselves, as if 
some other nature were looking into us, and laying open 
our souls, as the butcher lays open the organs of the 
victims of his knife, while Montaigne removes, one by one, 
the coverings of his soul. We almost seem to bleed under 
the revealer. For though no two men are exactly alike, 
and Montaigne has only been able to describe the soul of 
one man, out of the infinitude of men, and that one man 
Montaigne • yet, soul agrees with soul, as closely as body 
with body ; and we feel the same confidence in the des- 
criptions of the Essayist as we should in the descriptions 
of the Anatomist, even though they were over the body of a 
murderer. For murderer as he is makes no alteration in 
the functions of the right and left auricle, or the number 
of his ribs. He is equal there with the most delicate and 
tender lady, that cannot set her foot upon the ground for 
deiicateness and tenderness. And thus it is that we 
peruse Montaigne's Essays with as much emotion, as if he 



101 

were reading our thoughts and feelings from the book of 
our lives before the Great Judge. He seems to be 
indicting our mortal actions, and preferring our weaknesses, 

in the shape of charges against us. For though the 
reader may say. this is not me ; this is another man — 
weaker perhaps, more fallible, more erroneous than I am; 
yet this subterfuge will not do. As we read on, the 
internal evidence is continually protruding that this 
exposer of weakness, this betrayer of the secrets of human 
nature, this unf older of the living organism of blindness, 
wilfulness, uncertainity. was a superior man — a man to 
be classed with the Platos and Lockes — a rare example in 
the race. If then we can delude ourselves that we are 
not as he is, it will be rather that we are worse than he 
is ; and that the humiliating picture that makes us 
tremble is a flattei'ed likeness of ourselves. 

Now there is no quality so apparent in these won- 
derful productions as their unpremeditated carelessness. 
The brain seems to overflow in them. There is no effort 
to squeeze or compel the mind to express itself; but it 
does so from sheer overplus, from the uneasiness of accu- 
mulation. Confession flows forth, desultory, idly; swayed 
hither and thither by the accident it encounters, like a 
brook along a meadow. What we call art seems alto- 
gether wanting : there is no arrangement, no construction, no 
sign of any end sought. Montaigne runs on as unregardedly 
as one boy does to another. The uppermost thought has the 
uppermost word, and the last experience is set down while 
its novelty is fresh upon the thought. " I see better than 
any other/' he says, "that all I write are but the idle 



102 

whimsies of a man that has only nibbled upon the outer 

crust of the Sciences in his nonage, and only retained a 

formless general image of them, who has got a little 

snatch of everything and nothing of the whole a la mode 

de France. For I know in general that there is such a 

thing as Physic, a Knowledge in the Laws, four parts in 

Mathematics, and in part what all these aim and point at ; 

but to dive further than that, and to have 

cudgelled my brains in the study of Aristotle, ... I 

have never done it. Neither is there any one art of 

which I am able to draw the first lineaments and dead 

color, insomuch that there is not a boy in the lowest form 

in a school that may not pretend to be wiser than I, who 

am not able to pose him in his first lesson ; which if I am 

at any time forced upon, I am necessitated in my own 

defence to ask him some universal questions, such as may 

serve to try his natural understanding ; a lesson as strange 

and unknown to him as his to me. I never settled 

myself to reading any book of solid learning but Plutarch 

and Seneca, and these, like the Danaids, I eternally 

fill, and it as constantly runs out, something of which 

drops upon this paper, but very little or nothing stays 

behind."* Let us turn to another passage. "I have 

often thought even the best authors a little out in so 

obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant 

and solid contexture. They choose a general air of a man, 

and according to that inteipret all his actions, of which if 

some be so stiff and stubborn, that they cannot bend or 

* Ch. 25, Bk. 1. We use the quaint translation of Cotton, 
which harmonises very agreeably with the quaint old French, 



103 

writhe them to any uniformity with the rest, they are 
presently imputed to dissimulation. . . For my part, I 
must ingeniously declare that the puff of every accident 
not only carries me along with it. according to its own 
proclivity, but that, moreover. I discompose and trouble 
myself by the instability of my own posture, and vrhoever 
will look narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find 
himself twice in the same condition. I give my soul 
sometimes one face, and sometimes another, according to 
the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, it 
is because I consider myself variously. All contraries are 
there to be found, in one corner or another, or after one 
manner or another. Bashful, insolent, chaste, lustful, 
prating, silent, laborious, delicate, ingenious, heavy, 
melancholic, pleasant, lying, true, knowing, ignorant, 
liberal, covetous, and prodigal. I rind all this in myself 
more or less, according as I turn myself about, and 
whoever will sift himself to the bottom, will find in him- 
self, even by his own judgment, this volubility and 
discordance. In a word, I hive nothing to say of myself 
entirely simply and solidly without mixture and confusion. 
Distinguo is the most universal member of my logic. 
Though I always intend to speak well of good things, and 
rather to interpret such things as may fall out in the best 
sense than otherwise ; yet such is the strangeness of our 
condition that we are sometimes pushed on to do well 
even by vice itself, if well-doing were not judged by the 
intention only. One gallant action therefore ought not to 
concluole a man valiant. If a man was brave indeed, he 
would be always so, and upon all occasions. If it were a 



104 

habit of virtue, and not a sally, it would render a man 
equally resolute in all accidents \ the same alone as in 
company ; the same in lists as in battle. For, let them 
say what they will, there is not one valour for the 
pavement and another for the field. He would bear 
a sickness in his bed as bravely as a wound in the 
field, and no more fear death in his own house than at 
an assault. We should not then see the same man 
charge into a breach with a brave assurance, and after- 
wards torment himself, and pule like a woman for the loss 
of a trial at law, or the death of a child. When being a 
detected coward to infamy, he is constant in the necessities 
of poverty and want — when he starts at the sight of a 
barber's razor, and rushes fearless into the sword of an 
enemy ; the action is commendable, not the man. * 

The Essays of Montaigne have been succeeded by 
similar kinds in every literature ; but by none that even 
aspires to rival those of the wonderful old Frenchman. 
Montaigne was born in the year that Henry YIIL 
married Anne Bullen, and died four years after the 
Spanish Armada was dispatched to invade England. He 
was thus contemporary with the best age of our Dramatic 
Literature ; but he preceded th?,t of France by a generation. 
The trustworthiness, grace, freedom, and abandonment of 
Montaigne's performance determined almost the law of the 
Essay. All, more or less, were framed after the model he 
had set; but all fell far short of their model. What in 
Montaigne was spontaneous, became in his imitators 
constraint, or licence. We need notice only two forms 
* Bk. 2, Ck L 



105 

which tlie Essay assumed in England. The first was that 
of Lord Bacon. Far inferior to those of Montaigne in 
Philosophy, and wholly wanting in that open revelation 
and unswathing of the soul, which is the very life-blood of 
Montaigne's work, Bacon's Essays are almost entirely 
Philosophic. They deal in mere analyses. They are 
little other than axioms, and read almost like a collection 
of Proverbs. But even as Philosophic treatises, they will 
not bear much scrutiny. They deal only in broad 
generalizations ; which are apt enough in the main, but 
fail when tried on special examples. They have the 
advantage of short texts in being very cpaotable, and 
hence perhaps much of their reputation. Few read them, 
and a very small part of those read them for pleasure. 
The matter of them can hardly be said to advance 
knowledge, even on what they profess to treat. One of 
Bacon's famous axioms is that " Beading makes a full man, 
writing an exact man, conference a ready man." Xoav, 
reading may not only leave a man very empty • but a 
man may be a very full man without any reading. 
Neither is writing the basis of exactness, since every 
day's experience shows that the readiest writers are 
generally the most inexact ; and the readiness of con- 
ference depends on the preparation which the mind has 
had before, and its natural inclinations. Still the axiom 
holds generally, and has perhaps not been without value in 
determining half and half minds — minds that want a 
guide to point them out the way to any indirect excellence. 
The other type of the English Essay is that of 
Addison. "With far less sententious philosophy than 



106 

Bacon, Addison has given us far more real and practical 
philosophy. The hard texts of Bacon repel, the winning 
readiness of Addison's moral discourses invite. We read 
him for pleasure, and his sense works imperceptibly into 
our inclinations, and directs them as if it were their own. 
Bacon has hardly left anything of the Essay behind but 
the name. Addison has never wandered from it, but has 
blended Poetry and Philosophy — Observation and Deduc- 
tion — the eye and the mind so imperceptibly together, 
that we rove with him over society in general ■ or visit 
some especial character, as Sir Roger de Coverly ; or turn 
to criticism, or allegory, with only a repeated sense of the 
right there is in the writer to be thus various and 
expansive. Without imitating Montaigne, Addison has 
secured our sympathy with his ideas, second only to the 
charm of the great Frenchman. His genius was unequal to 
the effort, or perhaps too fastidious, or too inert, to withdraw 
the coverings from his own mind ; but in the general descrip- 
tions of classes, and his portrait of Sir Roger in particular, he 
has shown his mastery over that kind of character, which 
humour reproduces most vividly and pleasantly. From 
Addison to Charles Lamb, the Essay remained as Addison 
made it ; and even such an original mind as that of Dr. 
Johnson consented to follow, at a humble distance, with 
the Spectator constantly before him. Lamb is the first 
that broke away from Addison, and he stands at present 
as a new example, servile to none • but strong in his own 
free unaided individuality. 

And it is this emancipation from models — this free 
individuality that has made Elia a masterpiece. With a 



107 

whole century of industrious Essayists before him — with 
all the laws of the Essay as it were written in the 
Spectator — with the clamour of applause ringing in his 
ears, and daring the writer to innovation, it almost seems 
as if Lamb had never read either Spectator or Rambler ; 
so thoroughly free is he from all that looks like imitation 
of them. He is as far from Addison as Addison is from 
Montaigne ; and he has fixed such a bar of originality 
over his works, that it would be far more daring to make 
Lamb a model than it was to make Addison one. It is 
almost as perilous to imitate Lamb directly as it would be 
to imitate Montaigne. For though Montaigne, as we 
said, gave rise to the Essay, it was the form not the 
thought that raised up imitators. Both Montaigne and 
Lamb stand out of the course of imitation, and what is genius 
in them would in second-rate hands become absurdity. 
The Spectator came from Montaigne, but was not of him. 
But though we have Spectators multiplied without end, 
under the names of Loungers, Guardians, Idlers, there 
is no series of Essays so closely resembling Montaigne, as 
the feeblest of these resembles the Spectator. Though 
Addison's genius was supreme, it was very imitable ; but 
Montaigne's genius was inimitable, and we think it will 
be found that Lamb's most valuable part is as safe as Mon- 
taigne's from the spoiler. Had the Spectator been as lonely 
in English literature as Montaigne's work is in French, we 
know not but its reputation, great as it is, might not have 
been greater. "We look upon that genius to be greater which 
has soared beyond the flight of followers, than that which 
has provoked a host of imitators. For imitation is an inner 



108 

prompting that the same kind of power is present as is 
displayed in the writing it imitates, though it may be not 
in the same quantity. It shows the existence of a less rare 
material. It is mostly that kind of genius wherein the 
intellect is accompanied by form ; the mechanical enters 
into it, and art has a very important share in the work. 
Whereas in such instances as Montaigne and Lamb, art is 
nowhere. The mind makes its method as it runs alone:. 
It has no more path than forked lightening ; but strikes 
through the darkness in a series of uncertainties. 

Of the three writers — Montaigne, Addison, and 
Lamb, Montaigne is the simplest. He uses the fewest 
tools for his work. His observation of himself, his 
comparison of himself with mankind in general, and his 
deductions on the source and causes of tempers, dispositions, 
humors, and inconsistences, backed with reference to 
ancient authors, constitute almost all his material. 
Addison uses acute observation on manners and disposition, 
he works the imagination for his tales and allegories, he 
employs reason in his moral expostulations and discourses, 
he sometimes uses gentle sarcasm, but is oftener alive in 
humor. He is a critic, a poet, a divine, a novelist, a 
moralist, a satirist, a humorist by turns. Montaigne is a 
Philosopher, Egotist, Moralist, but all the other principles 
are wanting. Lamb is more component than Montaigne ; 
but less so than Addison. Humor, Character, Confession, 
and Reminiscence form the staple of his Essays. He 
scarcely clashes either with Addison or Montaigne ; 
though humor and observation of character belong to 
Addison, and confession is the governing soul of Montaigne. 



109 

Yet their methods of using these common materials are so 
different, that it is only the approximate nature of 
language that forces us to include them under the same 
heads. 

Let us instance these threads of Lamb's work. Wit 
and humor are sometimes confounded, and even exact 
writers have praised Addison for wit, when it is really 
doubtful whether he ever wrote anything that could come 
within a definition that distinguishes wit from humor. 
The lax use of the word wit formerly, when it was applied to 
cleverness rather than any special excellence, has not yet 
left it an undoubted province of its own ; but. if we trust 
the most approved examples of it. we can hardly deny 
that it involves a certain quantity of ill-nature, as well as 
quick nature ; and can seldom be said to be triumphant, 
till it lias inriicted a sting somewhere. The conversation 
in the School for Scandal is by no means unimportant as 
evidence on the question. 

" Lady Sne&rweU, You are a cruel creature Sir Peter 
— too phlegmatic yourself for a jest, and too peevish to 
allow wit in others. 

Sir Peter T. Ah. madam ! True wit is more nearly 
allied to good nature than your ladyship is aware of. 

Lady Teazle. True. Sir Peter. I believe they are so 
near akin, that they never can be united." 

The answer of Lady Teazle here is perfect wit. 

In a dispute between Sir William Lewis and Wilkes, 
the former in his anger cried. " I'll be your butt no longer."' 
■• With all my heart."' said Wilkes, " I hate an empty one. ; ' 

When Dr. Johnson, in a political dispute on Reform, 



110 

tauntingly asked Dr. Crow who was the first Whig, the 
latter was puzzled, and the Doctor thought he had clenched 
his opponent, when he told him that the Devil was the 
first Whig, for he attempted to set up Reform in Heaven. 
"Indeed," said Dr. Crow, "then if he was a Whig in 
Heaven, he must have been the first Tory when he got 
into Hell." 

These examples are as distinguished by their sharp- 
ness as their readiness — they are as angry as they are 
clever. Pope, with a glow of wit and severity, describes 
Addison as so " obliging that he ne'er obliged," and the 
Dedication-seeker is described in his first Satire with wit 
after wit in successive cuts. The poets throng around 
him — 

"An unextinguished race, 
Who first his judgment asked, and then a place ; 
Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat, 
And flattered every day, and some days eat : 
Till grown more frugal in his riper days, 
He paid some bards with port, and some with praise, 
To some a dry rehearsal was assigned, 
And others, harder still, he paid in kind. 

* * * * * 

But still the great have kindness in reserve ; 
He helped to bury whom he helped to starve." 

It is not impossible that wit may sometimes be amiable. 
But it is almost constant enough to become a law, that it 
takes the opposite course, and soon becomes humor when 
it becomes kind. It is this sort of wit, this kind of wit or 
humor, that abounds in Addison and Lamb. 

Everything we do, all our actions, even all our 
thoughts, are composed of two elements or sides— the 



Ill 

comic and the serious. In general observation, the two 
are blended and neutralised. Humor and wit consist in a 
deliberate or rapid separation of these elements, and in 
selecting one to the neglect of the other. Addison had 
the power of resolving everything he observed into its 
component parts, and, as his taste inclined him to one or 
the other, he presented it to his reader. Lamb had the 
same power ; but while Addison merely separated, and 
presented his production without any other alteration, 
Lamb added other points, and illustrated the dismembered 
observation with similarities. Lamb's humor became 
therefore richer than that of Addison ; but some would 
say it lost in taste what it gained in color. It was at any 
rate separated from it farther than that of either Fielding 
or Goldsmith. Let us illustrate our observation. 

Speaking of the singular fashion of his days, which 
led ladies to use black patches on the face as party favors, 
as well as touches to bring out the life of beauty, Addison 
says, " 1 must here take notice that Rosalinda, a famous 
Whig partisan, has most unfortunately a very beautiful 
mole on the Tory part of her forehead, which, being very 
conspicuous, has occasioned many mistakes, and given a 
handle to her enemies to misrepresent her face, as though 
it had revolted from the Whig interest." In another 
paper he says, " I remember in particular, after having 
read over a poem of an eminent author on a victory, I met 
with several fragments of it upon the next rejoicing day, 
which had been employed in squibs and crackers, and by 
that means celebrated its subjects in a double capacity. I 
once met with a page of Mr. Baxter under a Christmas 



112 

pie. Whether or no the pastry cook had made use of it 
through chance or waggery for the defence of that super- 
stitious viand I know not, but on perusal of it, I conceived 
so good an idea of the author's piety that I bought the 
book." In this quiet smiling manner, Addison proceeds, 
paper after paper. He merely seems to expose the 
pleasant side of things, leaving their angry side untouched ; 
and, by that means, without exaggerating or misrepresen- 
ting, gives to his subjects interesting features, which 
ordinary minds do not perceive, because they are mixed 
up with their other element. We feel that Addison is not 
telling us anything very new, but something very 
agreeable. It is this faculty which has made his Sir 
Roger de Coverley such an attractive delineation. The 
mirthful part of the old Squire's character is separated 
from any alloy it might have ; and while nature is left to 
pursue her own course, she is more boldly exhibited by 
rejecting every disagreeable taint. Men and women have 
follies enough in the descriptions of Addison, but they 
have only a moderate share of strong vices. There 
cannot be a greater contrast than that which the writings 
of Swift and Addison exhibit. These celebrated men 
were contemporaries and friends, and were both gifted 
with original genius. But while Addison looks only on 
the pleasant side of men's character, Swift chooses nothing 
but the renulsive. Swift's men might have been born in 
Bedlam, and brought up in Newgate. When they do 
good, they mistake it for evil ; and use what is agreeable 
and beneficial merely to secure criminal ends, as the pick- 
pocket entertains his victim with interesting warnings, to 



113 

draw off the attention, and secure his prey. We have 
nothing to do with Swift here • but he affords an excellent 
illustration of a man, who chose exactly the opposite pole 
of human action to that chosen by Addison. And there 
is no doubt that the bitterness of his abilities, embittered 
by disappointment, exaggerated the evil he described with 
such laughter and such scorn ; while Addison only 
followed nature in his separation of the good from its 
baser connections. 

Let us look at a specimen or Wo of Lamb's humor. 
In the Two Races of Men he thus expands over the 
borrower. " What a careless even deportment hath your 
borrower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on 
Providence doth he manifest — taking no more thought 
than lilies. What contempt for money — accounting it 
(yours and mine especially) no better than dross. What 
a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of 
meum and tuum, or rather, what a noble simplification of 
language (beyond Tooke) resolving these supposed oppo- 
sites into one clear intelligible pronoun adjective. . 
He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with 
no receipt, confining himself to no set season. Every 
day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He 
applieth the leae tormentum of a pleasant look to your 
purse — which to that gentle warmth expands her silken 
leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which 
sun and wind contended. He is the true Propontic 
which never ebbeth, — the sea which taketh handsomely 
at each man's hand." Here the character, whoin Addison 
would have dismissed with one or two happy epithets, 

I 



114 

Lamb fences about with description, drawn from the 
storehouse of his fancy. Every separate item in the 
portrayal, rings responsively in the mind, and we conjure 
up, as he goes on, individual after individual, who answers 
to its detail. The humor is contained in this perfect 
truth. If it were not strictly within the bounds of nature, 
it would be caricature, or burlesque. But it is the care- 
fulness with which the writer observes his responsibilities 
that heaps the merit high. He runs daringly loose, and 
scatters his sketches one after the other, as he goes. Yet 
every one is a likeness. Every one has its type so 
common, that nobody is at a loss to refer to his example ; 
few but have had, at one time or other, to suffer under the 
lance of the bleeder. 

We take another specimen. One of Lamb's friends 
went to N ew South "Wales, and in his Essay on Distant 
Correspondents, he thus, in the banter of overflowing 
humor, asks after the inhabitants of that Cjuestionabie 
soil. " I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. 
When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins' island comes across me. 
Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades of Thieves. I 
see Diogenes prying among you with his perpetual fruit- 
less lantern. What must you be willing by this time to 
give for the sight of an honest man. You must almost 
have forgotten how we look. And tell me what your 
Sydneyites do ? are they thieving all clay long 1 Merciful 
heaven, what property can stand against such a depreciation 1 
The Kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their 
primitive simplicity un-Europe-taintecl, with those little 
short fore puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to 



115 

the pick-pocket. . . We hear most improbable tales at 
this distance. Pray is it true that the young Spartans 
among you are born with six fingers, which S23oils their 
scanning] It must look very odd, but use reconciles. 
For their scansion, it is less to be regretted : for if they 
take it into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they 
turn out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. Is 
there much difference to see, too, between the son of a 
thief and the grandson ? or where does the taint stop I Do 
you bleach in three or four generations ? . Do 

you grow your own hemp I — What is your staple trade — - 
exclusive of the national profession, I mean ? Your 
locksmiths. I take it, are some of your great capitalists." 

Here, without a word of wit, is that which all the 
wit in the world could not improve. Out of the vilest 
and most hated of the vices, a sweet and curious felicity of 
thought, and admirable power of separating the wholesome 
from the putrid, has served as a dish that the most 
fastidious appetite may relish. The same power of running 
away and collecting example is seen here as before. 
Diogenes, the pud of the Kangaroo, the six fingers, the 
young Spartans, the hemp, and the locksmiths are all so 
many collected illustrations, throwing up the subject in 
bolder and bolder relief till it stands before the mind's eye 
with as much of form and color as a picture necessarily 
ideal can do. And all this intellectual painting is 
accompanied with intellectual pleasure. The subject is 
one which hacks at the root of firm society, yet here it 
assumes playfulness and gratification — we laugh at the 
new grimaces, which an old injury can be distorted into.- 



116 

We have said that Addison and Lamb have left 
sufficient for comparison in their treatment of character. 
But while Addison mostly sets himself to describe classes, 
Lamb mostly attaches himself to individuals. He has 
some friend, or some personal recollection in his mind. 
Addison's Whig and Tory ladies, his general remarks on 
women in the 1 5th number of the Spectator, his character 
of Tom Touchy, Will Wimble, and Will Honeycomb are 
all, as it were, heads of clans. On the contrary, Lamb's 
Evans and John Tiph, the South Sea House clerks ; 
Boyer, the Christ's Hospital Pedagogue ; Thomas Coventry 
and Samuel Salt, the Old Benchers of the Middle Temple, 
and Elliston, the Comedian, are all flesh and blood men. 
Lamb too had his palette for broader sketches, and in his 
Mrs. Battle, Scotchmen, Quakers, Captain Jackson, we 
have instances of class drawing. Addison's Sir Boger de 
Coveriey is represented in so many situations, that we are 
more familiar with him than we are with half the men we 
know. Could we meet him in the street, we should have 
no hesitation in holding out the hand to him, and 
gossiping on the grouse disease, or the prospects of the 
next meet in the neighborhood. We know his mind as 
familiarly and more confidently than we do that of many 
a friend of a dozen years' standing. We know his 
smiling nature could never be permanently wrinkled, and 
we should dash into freedom and ease with him accordingly. 
The Captain Jackson of Lamb is but a scene in a 
character, compared with Sir Boger de Coveriey ; but it 
is a scene that has never heen surpassed. The main 
features of the individual are, hj a few apparently random 



117 

dashes, thrown up ; and the man could hardly have been 
improved, however he might have been elaborated, by 
twenty such other introductions. Sir Roger de Coverley 
and Captain Jackson, and Parson Adams, and George 
Primrose belong to the same side of human nature — 
sunny and happy; because they look on other men as 
good as themselves, and confide in them as truly as in 
their own thoughts. "There is a set of men," says 
Addison, " whom I have lately called Blanks of Society, 
as being altogether unfurnished with ideas, till the 
business and conversation of the clay has supplied them. 
I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of 
great commiseration, when I have heard them asking the 
first man they have met with, whether there was any 
news stirring, and by that means gathering together 
materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know 
what to talk of till about twelve o'clock in the morning ; 
for by that time they are pretty good judges of the 
weather, know which way the wind sits, and whether the 
Dutch mail be come in." "We may set Lamb's description 
of the Scotch character against this. " You must speak 
upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a 
suspected person in an enemy's country. <A healthy 
book ! ' — said one of his countrymen to me, who had 
ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle, — c Did 
I catch rightly what you said ? I have heard of a man in 
health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see 
how that epithet can be properly applied to a book ! ' 
Above all you must beware of indirect expressions before 
a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you 



118 

are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are 
upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful female after 
Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. 
* * * *. After he had examined it minutely, I 
ventured to ask him how he liked My Beauty (a foolish 
name it goes by among my friends) — when he very gravely 
assured me, 'that he had considerable respect for my 
character and talents ' (so he was pleased to say,) 'but had 
not given himself much thought about the degree of my 
personal pretentions ' The misconception staggered me, 
but did not seem much to disconcert him." 

3STo character has ever been touched more happily 
than Elliston. "To descant upon his merits as a 
Comedian would be superfluous. "With his blended 
private and professional habits alone I have to do ; that 
harmonious fusion of the manners of the player into those 
of every day life, which brought the stage boards into 
streets and dining-parlors, and kept up the play when the 
play was ended. — ' I like Wrench,' a friend was saying to 
him one day, 'because he is the same natural, easy 
creature on the stage that lie is o/' ' My case exactly,' 
retorted Elliston — with a charming forgetfulness, that the 
converse of a proposition does not always lead to the 
same conclusion — ' I am the same person off the stage that 
I am on.' The inference at first sight seems identical ; but 
examine it a little, and it confesses only that the one 
performer was never, and the other always, acting. And 
in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deport- 
ment. You had spirited performance always going on 
before your eyes, with nothing to pay. . . He carried 



119 

about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his 
portable playhouses at corners of streets, and in the market 
places. Upon flintiest pavements, he trod the boards still : 
and if his theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize 
carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet." 

We have said that Lamb has one characteristic, or 
rather one occasional trait that brings him into competition 
with Montaigne. By this we only meant that he employs 
the same form for communicating his ideas. He frequently 
reveals his motives, and confesses his habits and opinions. 
But these revelations are mere trifles compared with the 
perpetual recurrence of Montaigne to himself. In Lamb 
confession blurts out now and then, and never becomes 
really what might be termed egotistical. It glows 
agreeably out of Oxford in Yacation, in the chapter on 
Ears, in Old China, in the Praise of Chimney Sweeps, and 
others. But it is a mere confession of habits, notions, 
and incidents of his life, — little bits of autobiography, that 
show how diflicuit it was for his mind to conceal itself, or 
to soar among shadows, or conjure up miserable skeletons 
of reality, when the flesh and blood reality was at hand. 
But he never like Montaigne aims at turning the mind 
inside out, and looking as it were behind the soul. 

Such are the points in which these remarkable Essays 
may be compared with the most celebrated that have 
preceded them, and in such points do they hold themselves 
freely and boldly original, even when they occupy 
departments of thought similar to the Essays of Addison 
and Montaigne. It only remains that we endeavor to 
look at them by their own light. 



120 
The mind of Lamb was perpetually toying w/ith 

V 

itself — it was always ready to fly at every hint, Hire a 
kitten at every moving thing, — it seldom or ever drained 
a subject; but rather sipped at it, and with fluttering 
uncertainty, winged away to new fragrance and new 
sweets. Hence most of his essays suggest, as well as 
bestow. He is especially fond of definition, and some- 
times throws a whole poem, or a lot of poetical hints into 
the dry dictionary skill of showing how many ways one 
object may be looked at. Take his definition of a Poor 
Relation. " A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing 
in nature — a piece of impertinent correspondency — an 
odious approximation — a haunting conscience — a prepos- 
terous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our 
prosperity — an unwelcome remembrancer — a perpetually 
recurring mortification — a drain on your purse, a more 
intolerable dun on your pride — a drawback upon success — ■ 
a rebuke to your rising — a stain in your blood — a blot on 
your scutcheon — a rent in your garment — a death's head 
at your banquet — Agathocles' pot — a Mordecai in your 
gate — a Lazarus at your door — a lion in your path — a frog 
in your chamber — a fly in your ointment — a mote in your 
eye — a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, 
the one thing not needful — the hail in harvest — the ounce 
of sour in a pound of sweet." All these ramifications of 
one object work upon us by their aptness — an aptness that 
surprises us like wit, and which only want to fall as 
rejoinders to become wit. 

A few instances of the different moods of these 
Essays, after what we have already instanced, are hardly 



121 

needed to show that Elia is the masterpiece we asserted It 
to be. "We will, however, give two or three specimens. 
Let us look at Lamb in his serious mood. No Essay, not 
even excepting any of Addison's, so deeply thrusts 
reflection into the reader as that on New Years' Eve, 
Lamb's nature did not allow him to cover up his feelings 
in conventionalisms ; and hence, although some have 
drawn the sword against the sentiment of this Essay, 
we cannot but believe it has still penetrated deeper than 
sermons into their hearts. In musing on the last night of 
the year, over the changes of time, he tells us freely and 
openly that he fears death, and then with almost the 
pathos of a Glaudio, he pleads for life. "Not childhood 
alone, but the young mam till thirty never feels practically 
that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, 
he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he 
brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot 
June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing 
days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth 1 I 
feel these audits, but too powerfully. I begin to count 
the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the 
expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers' 
farthings. In proportion, as the years both lessen and 
shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would 
fain lay my inefTectual finger upon the spoke of the great 
wheel. I am not content to pass away ' like a weaver's 
shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the 
unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried 
with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity ; 
and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in 



122 

love with this green earth ; the face of town and country ; 
the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of 
streets. I would set np my tabernacle here. I am 
content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived ; 
I, and my friends, to be no younger, no richer, no hand- 
somer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, 
like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. Any 
alteration on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, 
puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a 
terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. 
They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state 
of being staggers me." 

Now look at this specimen of true humor. He is 
speaking of St. Valentine's day, and its love stationary. 
"What authority we have in history or mythology for 
placing the head quarters and metropolis of God Cupid 
in this anatomical seat (the heart) rather than in any 
other is not very clear ■ but we have got it, and it will 
serve as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine 
upon some other system, which might have prevailed for 
anything which our pathology knows to the contrary, a 
lover addressing his mistress in perfect simplicity of 
feeling; ' Madam my liver and fortune are entirely at your 
disposal;' or putting a delicate question, 'Amanda, have 
you a midriff to bestow T But custom has settled these 
things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid 
triangle, while its less fortunate neighbors wait at animal 
and anatomical distance." 

The Beggar again is by the subtle process of humor 
exalted from the lowest to the highest rank. The 



123 

ingenuity that runs through one idea after another, easing 
Lazarus of his "burdens, and enfranchising him by 
ingenious subtleties is done admirably. "Bags, which 
are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's robes, and 
graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, 
the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. 
He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind 
it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He 
weareth all colors, fearing none. His costume hath 
undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the 
only man in the universe who is not obliged to study 
appearances. The ups and downs of the world concern 
him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The 
price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations 
of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch liim not, 
or at worst but change his customers. He is not 
expected to become bail or surety for anyone. No man 
troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. 
He is the only free man in the universe." 

Such a passage as the following is not describing 
character, it is sitting and observing it. " Sarah Battle 
was none of that breed. [Half-and-half players.] She 
detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and 
would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat 
herself at the same table with them. She loved a 
thorough-faced partner, a determined enemy. She took 
and gave no concessions. She hated favours. She never 
made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary 
without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a 
good fight • cut and thrust. She held not her good sword 



124 

(her cards) 'like a dancer.' She sate bolt upright; and 
neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. 
All people have their blind side — their superstitions ; and 
I have heard her declare, under the rose, that hearts was 
her favorite suit." 

Elia is not a large book. Indeed it is so small that 
many who seem to consider that it is necessary for a man 
to be voluminous to be worthy the recollection of his 
species may be doubtful of the right of its author to a 
very high reputation. It would be no use to argue 
against such logic, though we fear it is much more 
general than its absurdity would lead us to suppose. 
Bulk and genius are correlatives in the belief of the 
majority. Yet when we take down the volumes of those 
who have written best, and written most at the same time, 
we shall be soon convinced that however great a space 
their works may occupy, that part of their works on 
which their reputations rest and on which they will 
depend for remembrance, make but a sorry fraction of the 
whole. The Novels, Satires, and Pamphlets of Cervantes 
have perished. He survives in Don Quixote alone. It is 
a matter of great likelihood that Goethe's Tales, Dramas, 
Sketches, Travels, Novels, Treatises will ail ultimately 
find Faust alone surviving their ruin. Dryclen's volu- 
minous pen, which scarcely rested for thirty years, will 
live in the better parts of Absalom and Achitophel alone, — 
in perhaps less than a thousand lines. Pope must rely on 
four Satires and the Rape of the Lock. Ben Jonson, out 
of thirty dramatic pieces, can only depend on three. It is 
not at all improbable that the 1/ Allegro and Penserosa of 



125 

Milton will survive Paradise Lost ; and that the life of 
Paradise Lost itself will he only prolonged by the genius 
of its two first boohs. Southey has scarcely given a 
single pledge of durability, unless it he his Life of Nelson j 
and Scott, vre fear, will rather be read in Scenes than in 
entire tales, unless Waverley and the Antiquary should 
secure this honor. Shakspere alone seems to have secured 
the greatest certainty of immortality. Fully one-half of 
his thirty-six plays are masterpieces, and are as likely to 
interest posterity, as anything we have received from the 
ancients. Amid then these ruins — these fragments of 
the Temples and Theatres in which we worship and 
amuse ourselves, vre may confidently expect that Elia will 
have its site. If Shakspere be their Colliseum, and 
Milton their Jupiter Stator, Lamb may be the fragment of 
some triumphal arch, and verify the line of Keats that 
"A thing of beauty is a joy fur ever.' 3 
While we have been lingering over Lamb's works, 
vre have lost all traces of his life. We left him only 
twenty-five years old, and vre have been carried twenty- 
three years farther on — nearly double — in commenting on 
his works, and. especially on Elia. However the attrac- 
tions of his life are rather his works than his movements. 
And yet his movements are no unimportant part of his 
life, since in the course of it, he changed his residence no 
less than ten times. He was horn in the Temple precincts, 
and did not quit the place of his birth till he was twei 
years old. The incorporation of any place with our 
youthful ideas generally fixes it in our affections- The 
whole life of Lamb showed that this, his first residence, 



126 

"was his favorite residence. He experimented on other 
places, but twice afterwards he returned to the Temple. 
The scene of the terrific tragedy that deprived him of his 
mother was No. 7, Little Queen Street. The family had 
removed thither the previous year. It was lodgings ; for 
during his life, Lamb was only for a few months master 
of an entire house — he had only a short opportunity of 
knowing what is the Englishman's castle, of which so 
much has been said. After residing in these lodgings 
about five years he removed to Pentonville. There an 
old maid servant died, which brought on another of Miss 
Lamb's occasional fits of insanity. "Mary," says Charles 
in a letter to Coleridge, "will get better again, but her 
constantly being liable to such relapses is dreadful ; nor is 
it the least of our evils, that her case, and all our story, is 
so well-known around us. We are in a manner marked." 
This lowers his spirits. He writes in a moping style, and 
says he is completely shipwrecked. But a short taste of 
melancholy satisfies a healthy spirit, and Lamb is soon 
alive again at the thoughts of getting out of Pentonville, 
and hiding the marks and infirmities of his situation in the 
midst of London. He obtained an offer of rooms in 
Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. His landlord 
was a friend, who knew his story. "I have got three 
rooms," he says in a letter to Coleridge, " (including ser- 
vant) under <£34 per year. . . So we are once more 
settled." It was during this summer that Lamb paid one 
of those visits to Oxford, which he has commemorated in 
his Oxford in vacation — when he used to "play the 
gentleman, and enact the student , when in " moods of 



127 

humility," lie says, " I can be a sizar or a servitor. When 
the peacock vein rises, I strut a gentleman commoner, 
In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts." Oxford 
and Cambridge weie, next to London, his favorite 
sojourns. The antiquity of the places, their libraries, 
their grave monkish superiors, Wandering among old- 
fashioned courts and cloisters, stirred his Elizabethan 
mind to action, and almost realised some scenes of those 
quaint plays he loved to pore over. He there found 
things in pretty much the same condition as they were in 
the days of Isaac Walton and Quarles. The boisterous 
world touches these retreats very lightly ; and Lamb, 
when he visited them, felt as if he was visiting a dozen 
generations back. They gave vigor and sub-reality to 
his dreams. 

In the summer of the same year he visited Coleridge, 
at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. We have already 
alluded to Coleridge; but he is such a recurring individual 
in Lamb's life, and his own character was made up of so many 
inconsistencies, that we shall not be repeating ourselves in 
again referring to it. There has never perhaps been so 
great a literary disappointment as Coleridge. He took 
everybody by surprise, and satisfied nobody. He was 
always projecting, always beginning, always promising ; 
yet, whatever he projected, he left unbeg in : whatever he 
begun, he left unfinished ; and whatever he promised, 
unperformed. Systems of Philosophy, Epic Poetry, 
Tragedies, Encyclopedias, Newspapers, Translations, Criti- 
cism, Theology, the Regeneration of the Human Pace were 
not too much for the ambition of one towering intellect, and 



128 

the compass of one short life. He threw forth the faint 
twinkling beacon of them all in monologues, that were 
delightful to every one that listened to them, but which had 
the singular effect of scarcely ever leaving a distinct idea 
behind them. Whatever Coleridge accumulated, he had the 
most ingenious way of retaining that ever man had. He 
seemed to be always imparting, and yet he never imparted. 
His hearers were mute with astonishment, and so attentive 
and interested that hours seemed to have only the span of 
minutes, while Coleridge was dilating on the limits of 
reason, or the fallibility of sense, or the pure domain of 
freewill ; and yet no listener could ever tell where their 
instructor had planted his limits, what constituted the 
fallibility of the eye or the touch, or where freewill begun 
or ended. The charm of the speaker was one of the most 
extraordinary that has ever been exercised, because it was 
one which in a common individual would have been calcu- 
lated to weary. Words, when they issued from the lips of 
Coleridge, seemed to have collected from his musical into- 
nation, a fascinating power, that made no matter whether 
they were reasonable or unreasonable — whether they meant 
anything, or were mere coverings of ashes. His mind was 
philosophical, without one single principle of exactness in 
it". It was logical, without deriving any consequence from 
its premises. It was analytical, without disturbing the 
wholeness of any prejudice. It was synthetical, without 
constructing any solid idea from the loose material which 
was strown on every side of it. Yet ail these disadvantages 
of a common mind were actual advantages to Coleridge. 
Had there been nothing else to mark his intellect but these 



129 

discordances, it would never have been known on the 

outside of an alehouse. But all this loose materia] was 

reflected from the mirrors of his imagination, and changed 
shape, color, and arrangement as beautifully as the hits of 
glass, beads, rags 5 and spangles change their order in the 
kaleidiscope. Its want of coherence gave it variety. His 
hearers listened to all the material of philosophy, they 
saw and felt that there was mathematical shape in the 
arrangement, and elaborate color in the composition, yet 
still they could not determine what was the value that it 
represented ; they were astonished, and went away won- 
dering much, and knowing nothing. 

Those who were first acquainted with Coleridge 
considered his mind wholly poetic. Those who looked at 
him a little later thought the poetry had dried into 
theology. Those who only became acquainted with him 
later still would have claimed him as one of the most 
infatuated of Traucendentalists. Those who knew him 
latest of all would have found all these mixed together, and 
the Poetry, the Theology, the Philosophy brightening 
one another without clearing one another ; but rather 
looming through summer mists, where everything is 
brilliant, hazy, sensuous, and indistinct. There was no 
subject that Coleridge shrunk from, but every subject he 
touched merged at last into that illimitable Philosophy, 
which expanded it into vapor, and left it like a meteor 
wandering in space. He would take a prawn, or the 
vertebra of the fish he had been dining on, and from that 
text spin the gravest sermon. From the smallest he 
would expand to the greatest — from the shrimp to the 

K 



130 

leviathan — from the scavenger of the sandbanks to the 
great Behemoth. Then the flux and reflux of the waters, 
the currents and wanderings of the tropic and polar floods 
would carry him forward, without sail or rudder, impelled 
by wind, tide, and ground -swell, withersoever the thought 
of the moment carried him ; till, after a hundred side 
driftings, the prawn would re-appear, and there would 
remain a sense as sweet and fickle as the remembrance of 
exquisite music, and no more reproducible. 

Some of those who have heard him talk by hours at a 
time without interruption, or only with an interruption 
that he impatiently never replied to, have endeavored to state 
what he said. But that which took hours to deliver left 
nothing but half a page of disjointed opinion, or common- 
place anecdote. The aroma, the incense of the whole 
discourse consolidated into a small globule of solid matter. 
Monologues, which disciples have extolled in praise, which 
would be extravagant if applied to Comus, have thinned 
down in the transfer from Coleridge to his hearers into a 
dozen lines of matter; but little beyond that of other 
clever men. Yet when we consider this poor fruit from 
such a magnificent flower, we are only the more astonished 
at those rich resources, which could clothe, decorate, and 
ennoble what, in their nakedness, seem incapable of dis- 
tinction. But in the mind of Coleridge, light and dark- 
ness were hardly in opposition. The distinct pained him. 
He could not bear the hard known form of the positive 
w^orlcl, wuth its facts, and its definition. He hated men 
and systems, that dealt in ideas, which could not be 
disputed. The value of all he wrote, and of all he spoke, 



131 

consisted in suggestion more than in statement ; in fore- 
shadowing, rather than in portraying • in catching the 
attention with something over which the imagination 
could spread its transitory colors. When an object that 
lay vague and bodiless in his thought, began to assume 
the shape of something real, it lost half its value, it was 
neglected, and had to be re-dissolved and dispersed before 
it regained its place in the estimation of Coleridge. He 
hated Hume, and Voltaire, and Paley, and Locke, and 
Adam Smith less for the principles of their jmilosophies 
than for the distinctness with which they laid them down, 
and the absolute transparency of their language. "Whatever 
he could see clearly, he despised ; but the misty, which 
could be magnified at will, and took the very shape, size, 
and quality which was popular with him at the moment, 
was a phantom to play with, to build with, to promise 
with, to expand upon, to delight over. Like Turner he 
was greatest in painting air. It was not the solid earth, 
the busy populations with their plain facts of misery, 
wealth, pomp, rags, sadness, exultation, sweat, and ease 
that attracted him • but shapeless nations, from which 
every contradictory element was expelled, and whose 
institutions, thoughts, and realities were distillations of 
his imaginary nothings. 

But this frail vapor, which was always forming and 
altering, composing and decomposing, was unsubstantial 
nutriment for a whole life. And nothing in the life of 
Coleridge is more uppermost than the fact that to the 
dreamer it was no vapor, but a choking smoke, and a 
consuming fire. From his school days to his death da vs. 



132 

it was continually tossing him from place to place, and 
from experiment to experiment. It drew him to begin a 
hundred things, but allowed him to conclude nothing. It 
gave him such a distaste for the world, that everything in 
it seemed on the verge of passing away from the hands of 
what virtues remained in it to those of the vices only. 
Philosophy was becoming materialism, religion was 
becoming atheism, government by intelligence was 
becoming government by the passions, democracy was 
striding on, and trampling with its broad clouted shoe 
every delicate blossom and beautiful flower. Mechanism, 
or the authority of wood and iron, was over-ruling the 
authority of mind and muscle. Instinct was bearing down 
reason. A new convulsion was coming on, threatening to 
experience and knowledge what the French revolution 
threatened and carried out to Classism and Exclusiveness. 
The overthrow of the evil in 1789 was about to be 
retaliated by that evil in the overthrow of the good. 

But this universal ruin — dictated from the despondent 
mind of Coleridge, and pictured with all the fantasy of his 
creative spirit, was necessary to the ease of that mind. 
Despair and hope, like all the other principles of that 
wonderful arcana, were next door neighbors. That misery 
which sunk his eloquence to the lowest drone of melancholy 
sickliness was the grave whence all its mortality was to 
put on immortality. Among these relics, morsels, dust, 
and ashes of worth and excellence, there remained the 
minute life-germs still. It was the office of the true 
philosopher to discover and encourage those germs to a 
new birth. Hidden and dead as they appeared, nothing 



133 

could really destroy them; and it was the object of 
Coleridge to point out, in his expansive way, how this 
new birth was to be brought about. This was the conso- 
lation of his discourses — the buoy that kept him floating. 
This to the most acute and intent of Coleridge's listeners 
seemed to be the definite end of his vague lamentations 
over the tendency of political outcry, political economy, 
scientific devotion, and the materialism of life and 
thought. 

Coleridge was the youngest son of a clergyman of the 
church of England. He was one of a large family, and 
was educated at Christ's Hospital, he was transferred 
thence to Cambridge, and there his life of instability and 
experiment began. He was intended for the church, but 
he read himself into Unitarianism before he had half 
completed his university course. He fell in love, he 
proposed and was rejected; and in the midst of his studies 
started off and enlisted as a common soldier in a cavalry 
regiment, though he had scarcely ever mounted a horse. 
He used to write love verses for one of his smitten com- 
panions, who, at that price, rubbed down his charger. His 
classical attainments betrayed him to one of his officers, 
and procured his discharge. He went to visit a friend at 
Oxford. There he met Southey, who was intimate with 
Coleridge's friend. Southey was a student at Oxford, as 
Coleridge had been at Cambridge. They were charmed 
with one another. Both were enthusiasts. Both believed that 
the world was nearly worn out with disease, and both 
believed themselves capable of curing it. The same idea 
that Coleridge finished with, he thus began with. Out of 



134 

this sympathy Pantisocraey was formed, and Lovell, a friend 
of Southey, was added to the design. Southey threw up 
Oxford, and they all proceeded to Bristol, without a penny 
in their purses, and nothing to breast the world with but 
magnificent ideas. But these funds were ample to poets 
and philanthropists. They were bills at a long date, which 
were to be met at first by several series of lectures. Their 
present necessities were valiantly provided for by a volume 
of poems by each. Southey, Lovell, and Coleridge mean- 
while fell in love with three sisters. But Lovell,. who 
married first, opposed Coleridge, as his intended brother- 
in-law • and the contrivers of universal love and iinity 
started their scheme with a fiery quarrel. Southey had 
successfully begun lecturing on History. Coleridge 
offered to deliver a lecture for him on the Boman Empire ; 
but he forgot his promise, and another smart quarrel 
ensued between the brotherhood. Coleridge then married 
on the prospect of a guinea and a half for every hundred 
lines of poetry, and took a cottage ac Clevedon, near 
Bristol. His rent was five pounds per year, and his parlor 
was white- washed in a primitive fashion. Here Pantiso- 
craey was realized for a few weeks on the banks of the 
Severn. The hills, the trees, the woods, the waters were 
all that man ought to desire. Poetry furnished the white- 
washed parlor more daintily than a palace, and poetry for 
a little while brought heaven and earth together. In a 
short time he found that villagers were too inquisitive, and 
books were too far off In less than two months he was 
in Bristol again. But close lodgings in a populous city 
were unbearable after the country ; and, on the invitation 



135 

of a friend at Nether Stowey, lie removed thither. At 
this time lie was writing a volume of poetry, on which lie 

had been feeding his wife and himself since their marriage. 
He had eighteen other projected works in his head; but it 
was almost line by line that Cottle obtained the work he 
had paid for. At last he projected a newspaper. He 
went and canvassed for it himself and preached Unitarian 
sermons in the pulpits of BiiTainghain and Nottingham. 
At Bath he preached in blue coat and yellow buttons and 
white waistcoat, from Isaiah viii., verse 21, and turned 
his discourse into an harangue on the Iniquity of the Corn 
Laws. In the afternoon he preached on the Hair Powder 
Tax, to a congregation of seventeen. Three of the seven- 
teen left their pews before the sermon was over. The 
"Watchman, which was the name of his newspaper, only 
lived ten numbers out, and these numbers were only issued 
by efforts, that seemed to Coleridge's procrastinating nature 
like death-throes. He had talked the paper into a thousand 
subscribers. He soon wrote it down to half the amount. 
He then projected a school, and had the promise of three 
pupils. Then he was offered a pulpit at Shrewsbury. He 
was near concluding, when one of those sincere friends, 
whom Coleridge was fortunate enough to attract, inter- 
vened. Josiah Wedgewood, brother to the celebrated 
Etrurian, offered Coleridge a hundred a year, if he would 
not accept the bait. Coleridge hesitated — declined the 
<£100, and accepted the ministry. Wedgewood then offered 
£150. Coleridge accepted the £150, and declined the 
ministry. On this burst of good fortune, the poet seemed 
a new man. He had complained that all his projects had 



136 

failed, that lie only wanted bread and cheese to ease his 
mind against the daily necessities of life, that with this 
provision, he should yet be able to leave mankind an 
earnest of that great genius, which he felt the mere vulgar 
rampart of providing for the appetite alone prevented from 
freedom. He started for Germany, and read German 
poetry and German philosophy day and night. Schiller 
and Kant — the elucidator of human action, and the 
elucidator of human thought held him between them. 
His Schiller enthusiasm gave us Walienstein. His Kant 
enthusiasm gave broader wings and wider space to that 
indefinite dissertation, which had hitherto been fixed and 
solid to what, under the demonstrator of understanding 
and reason, it was destined to become. Coleridge returned. 
He went to London, and engaged to write politics for the 
Courier newspaper. In a few weeks the fit was over. 
Politics were too solid matter. Poetry and philosophy 
must be the objects of his life, and these required country 
solitudes. He removed to Cumberland. Here his health 
broke up under hard reading of schoolmen, philosophers, 
and divines, and he went abroad for health, and left his 
wife behind him. He had chosen Malta as a sanatorium. 
Here the governor needed a secretary. He had heard 
Coleridge talk, and he had been delighted with him. He 
offered the situation at £800 a year, and it was accepted. 
But in a few months master and servant quarrelled, and 
Coleridge was again thrown on adventure. His life for ten 
years afterwards was that of the first apostles, with neither 
house nor home, but such as his friends and admirers afforded 
him. He wrote a tragedy, which failed; lectured on 



137 

Shakspere. and forgot his appointed days and times, or 
left his audience to gape on their benches, while he went 

thirty miles in a stage coach, to conduct an unprotected 
female to her destination. He obtained a pension from 
the Tories for hot congenial politics, written for a news- 
paper, and obtained £ 300 from De Quincey. the opium 
eater, in consequence of admiration of the philosopher. 
He wrote sermons for lazy clergymen, who stipulated that 
they must not be too good, lest they should be solicited to 
publish them, and he filled up the erratic intervals of 
monologue and work with complaints of his uneasy and 
embarrassed lot * and how it was impossible to bring 
forth fruit and flowers under his bleak aspect ; and that 
the goading of immediate exigencies made tranquility 
impossible. Then in order to mitigate the tortures of a 
rheumatic disease, he resorted to opium. This fascinating 
drug seems to hare been a very elixir to him. It relieved 
every agony for a season, and threw his ideas into an 
extatic dance. Day after day the dose was increased, and 
day after day the charm became more masterful. At last 
he swallowed as much as a quart in twenty-four hours, 
and it became a question whether life was worth the 
trouble of its hard conditions. Coleridge put himself 
under control. An attendant constantly accompanied 
him, to prevent the tempter from mastering the philoso- 
pher. But never was a more pit-able picture presented 
than the struggle of the vile drug with surpassing reason. 
Coleridge submitted to every wish of his adviser — pledged 
his word, and reduced himself to twenty drops per day, 
and never went out without his guard. Yet he would 



138 

secretly put his opium bottle in his pocket, and when he 
reached a favorable spot, would send off his guard on some 
small errand, and steal into a druggist shop, and replenish 
his bottle. The last twenty years of his life were spent in 
the establishment of Mr. G-ilniain, of Highgate, a surgeon, 
who regulated his opiated system, and cared for the 
unstable sage with a constancy that has few parallels. 
With the capability then of everything, Coleridge had 
the stability for nothing. Yet he has left a remarkable 
name, and when we consider the character of the man, 
he has left more evidence of his life than might have been 
expected. But every work is a promise rather than a 
performance. All is preparation for the great, terminating 
in outline ; the block rounded for the statue, but scarce a 
feature cut. And we, who judge him by these bits of his 
mind, judge him, if we may trust those who had personal 
converse with him, by a most imperfect standard. 
Coleridge was essentially words, not works. His material 
was more ethereal than that of any teacher who ever lived. 
And while no teacher ever had such enraptured disciples, 
no disciples were ever so inadequate to represent their 
teacher. The flight of humming birds, the song of 
nightingales, the colors of evening clouds, the floating 
recollections of Pasta or Malibran, the hum of summer 
woods could apparently be as easily transferred to words 
as a monologue of Coleridge. But we must not be sur- 
prised that those who listened, and those who praised, and 
those who attempted to record what they praised failed ; 
when we know that Coleridge himself, when he tried 
to write as he spoke, threw down the pen, conquered. 



139 

He could not consolidate what was rarer than gossamer, 
nay than air itself. Words themselves on paper seemed 
to crush with their heaviness the attenuated thought, 
which, when merely delivered to the ear, they had buoyed 
up, and which was made charming by tone, manner, and 
countenance. 

Yet from the midst of this foggy confusion, many 
invaluable gems of opinion and scraps of philosophy have 
come down to us, and serve as specimens of the mind in 
in its easier moods, that was commonly so difficult to catch 
and confine. Ideas on all the great political, religious, and 
literary questions of our country have been saved from 
these wasteful orations • and though they may not equal 
the reputation of the discourses they were enshrined among, 
they are valuable as helps to speculation; and as the ideas 
of one, who confessedly thought too wisely and too well 
for a stubborn generation. Xo one then can study the 
mind of Coleridge without reverence, no one can study 
his life without pity. For when all that might is compared 
with all that meanness, who would not be inclined to 
say, — Give me not, oh Heaven ! magnificent imagination, 
wonderful powers of collecting knowledge, philosophic 
capability of arranging it, expansive eloquence in delivering 
it, unless thou combinest with the gifts, a steady purpose 
and a definite will. For all these greatnesses are nothing 
compared with that meanest supplement of them, which is 
the portion of the beggar and the footpad. 

In the early part of 1800 Coleridge was in London, 
writing for the Morning Post; and in March, he was with 
Lamb, as his guest. " Coleridge" he says in a letter, 



140 

dated March 17, "lias been with me now for nigh three 
weeks, and the more I see of him in the quotidian undress 
and relaxation of his mind, the more cause I see to love 
him. . . He is engaged in translations, which I hope 
will keep him this month to come." This translation was 
probably Wallenstein, which he published the same year. 
Coleridge afterwards returned to Nether Stowey, and 
Lamb visited him there during the summer. Talfourd 
says "He spent a few delightful holidays in his society and 
that of Wordsworth, who then resided in the neighbor- 
hood." This is an error. Wordsworth had fixed his 
residence at Grasmere in December, 1799, and had never 
resided in the neighborhood of Stowey since he left for 
Germany. As, however, he and his sister formed part of 
the company at Stowey, they must have been there like 
Lamb, as visitors. 

Coleridge had entered smartly into politics in 1800. 
He wrote Philippics, for the Morning Post; and, while 
the fit was on him, he recommended Lamb to write also. 
Light and sparkling paragraphs were then more necessary 
to newspapers than they are now, since the press has 
resolved itself into departments, and each department has 
its special representatives. Punch, and his followers do 
the sparkling now. But jokes on manners and dress, 
and banter on public men, were no unimportant parts of 
every paper then, and this was the work which Coleridge 
recommended Lamb to attempt. " He has lugged me to 
the brink of engaging to a newspaper," he writes to 
Manning, "and has suggested to me for a first plan the 
forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anatomist 



141 

of melancholy." But in a few weeks Coleridge himself 
was off. Some other freak of his imagination, some airy 
nothing drew him away, and the matter ended. " Coleridge 
has left us," he writes, "to go into the north, on a visit to 
his god, . Wordsworth. With him have flown all my 
splendid prospects of engagement with the Morning Post, 
all my visionary guineas, the deceitful wages of unborn 
scandal. . . All my intentions were but to make a 
little sport with such public and fair game as Mr. Pitt, 
Mr. Wilberforce, Mrs. Fitzherbert, the Devil, &c." 
Coleridge was gone to the north. He settled for a time at 
Keswick, gave up his politics ; and Lamb, in an amusing 
letter, enumerates the books and other material which he 
had left behind. One article was " a dressing gown (value 
fivepence,) in which you used to sit and look like a 
conjuror, when you were translating Wallenstein. " Another 
was "Tyrrell's Bibliotheca Politica, which you used to 
learn your politics out of, when you wrote for the Post 
mutatis mutandis, i.e., applying past inferences to modern 
data. I retain that, because I am sensible I am very 
deficient in politics myself; and I have torn up — don't 
be angry, waste paper has risen forty per cent., and I 
can't afford to buy it — all Buonaparte's Letters, Arthur 
Young's Treatise on Corn, and one or tovo more 
light-armed infantry, which I thought better suited 
the flippancy of London discussion than the dignity 
of Keswick thinking. Mary says you will be in a 
passion when you come to miss them ; but you must 
study philosophy. Bead Albertus Magnus de Chartis 
Amissis five times over after phle-botomising — tis Burton's 



142 

recipe — and then be angry with an absent friend if you 
can. " 

In 1797, Lamb and his sister had paid a visit to 
Coleridge at Nether Stowey, soon after the poet settled 
there. During this visit, Coleridge sprained his foot, and 
was unable to accompany his visitors on their rambles. 
While they were on one of these excursions, on a sweet 
summer evening, Coleridge consoled himself in his confine- 
ment by composing a poem on the disappointment he felt 
in not being able to be with them : — 

* ' Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, 
This lime-tree bower my prison ! I have lost 
Bea,uties and feelings, such as would have been 
Most sweet to my remembrance, even when age 
Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness ! They meanwhile, 
Friends, whom I never more may meet again 
On springy heath, along the hill-top edge, 
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, 
To that still roaring dell, of which I told. 

* * * Now, my friends, emerge 
Beneath the wide, wide Heaven, and view again 
The many-steepled tract magnificent 
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, 
With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up 
The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles 
Of purple shadow ! Yes, they wander on 
In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad, 
My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 
And hungered after nature, many a year, 
In the great city pent, winning thy way 
With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain 

And strange calamity. 

■& •& * 

My gentle-hearted Charles ! when the last rook 
Bent its straight path along the dusky air 
Homewards, I blest it, deeming its black wing 
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) 



143 

Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory. 

While thou stood'st gazing ; or, when all was still, 
Flew ereeking o'er thy head, and had a charm 
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom 
Xo sound is dissonant which tells of life." 

This poem, though written in 1797. was not published 
till this year, (1800) and caused Lamb thus to remonstrate 
against the epithet used to describe him. '-'For God's 
sake (I never was more serious) dont make me ridiculous 
any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it 
in better verses. It did well enough five years ago. wken 
I came to see you. and was moral coxcomb enough at the 
time you wrote the lines to feed upon such epithets * but. 
besides that, the meaning of gentle is equivocal at least, 
and almost always means poor-spirited. My sentiment is 
long since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking. 
I can scarce think but you meant it in joke." In an after 
letter he says " In the next edition of the Anthology, 
please to blot out gentle-hearted, and substitute drunken 
clog, ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any 
other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the 
gentleman in question.'' 

The lodgings in Southampton Buildings, from which 
Lamb expected so much satisfaction; were only held for a 
few months. "I am going to change my lodgings," he 
writes in the latter pail: of 1800, "having received a hint 
that it would be agreeable at our Lady's next feast. I 
have partly fixed upon most delectable rooms, which look 
out (when you stand a tip-toe) over the Thames and Surrey 
Hills. There I shall be able to lock my friends out, as 
often as I desire to hold free converse with my immortal 



144 

mind ; for my present lodgings resemble a minister's levee, 
I have so increased my acquaintance since I resided in 
town." And after actnal removal lie thus describes his new 
residence. "I live at No. 16, Mitre Court Buildings. . . 
N.B. — "When you come to see me, mount up to the top of 
the stairs — I hope you are not asthmatical — and come in 
flannel, for it's pure airy up there. And bring your glass, 
and I will show you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the 
river, so as hj perking up upon my haunches, and support- 
ing my carcase with my elbows, without much wrying my 
neck, I can see the white sails glide by the bottom of the 
King's Bench Walks, as I lie in my bed." 

The incipient engagement on the Morning Post, 
which the abrupt departure of Coleridge had broken off, 
led afterwards to a real engagement on that paper, and 
on the Albion. Lamb has described the sort of office 
he fulfilled in his Essay on Newspapers thirty-five years 
ago. " In those days every Morning Paper, as an 
essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, 
who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty 
paragraphs. Sixpence a joke — and it was thought very 
high too — was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these 
cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but above all, dress 
furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was 
to exceed seven lines. A fashion of flesh, or rather of 
pink-colored hose for the ladies luckily coming up at the 
juncture when we were on our probation for the place of 
Chief Jester to Dan's paper, established our reputation 
in that line. . . . Somebody had said, that to swallow- 
six cross-buns daily, consecutively for a fortnight, would 



145 

surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish jokes 
daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelve- 
month, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder 
exaction." He goes on to say. that as he was employed 
from eight to five in the city, and liked " a parting cup at 
midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate 
times/' he was obliged to devote to this joke-making, 
"that time; of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration; in 
which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, 
has to wait for his breakfast. . . . Xo Egyptian task- 
master ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. . , 
Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays too) why it- 
seems nothing. We make twice the number every day in 
our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical 
exemptions. But then they come into our head. But 
when the head has to go out to them — when the mountain 
must go to Mahomet — reader try it for once. . . From 
the office of the Morning Post, , . by change of pro- 
perty in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying 
exchange ! to the office of the Albion. . . What a 
transition — from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood 
desks, and silver inkstands, to an office — no office, but a 
den rather, but just redeemed from occupations of 
dead monsters, of which it seemed redolent — from the 
centre of loyalty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity 
and sedition. . . . F., without a guinea in his 
pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of 
his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on 
tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship. Proprieto - 
ship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were 

L 



146 

worth,) of the Albion, from one Lovell, of whom we know 
nothing, save that he stood in the pillory for a libel on 
the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern — for it 
had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could 
now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers — 
F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the Govern- 
ment in the first instance, and making both our fortunes 
by w T ay of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this 
infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling 
pieces and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the 
stamp-office, which allowed no credit to publications of 
that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we 
attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our 
friend. Our occupation now was to write treason. 
Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals were covered with 
flowers of so cunning a periphrasis . . that the keen eye 
of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the 
lurking snake among them." At length he tells us that 
after sundry paragraphs had been marked at the Treasury, 
in order to be submitted to the Law officers, an unlucky 
or lucky epigram on Sir James Mackintosh, when on the 
eve of his departure to India to reap the fruits of his 
apostacy, disgusted the best patron of the Albion, and 
sealed its fate. "The Albion is dead, and my revenues 
have died with it, but I am not as a man without hope. 
I have got a sort of opening to the Morning Chronicle." 

The following year (1801) he received a hearty 
invitation from Wordsworth, with whom he had now 
been a year acquainted, to visit him at Grasmere. Lamb 
declined, and in his reply threw out some very material 



117 

points in his character. " Separate," he says, " from the 

pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never 
see a mountain in my life. . . My attachments are ail 
local, purely local — I have no passion to groves and 
valleys. The rooms where I was horn, the furniture 
which has been before my eyes all my life, a book-case 
which has followed me about like a faithful dog (only 
exceeding him in knowledge) wherever I have moved, old 
chairs, old tables, streets, squares where I have sunned 
niyself, my old school — these are my mistresses — Have I 
not enough without your mountains ) I do not envy you. 
I should pity you. did I not know that the mind will 
make friends with anything. Your sun, and moon, and 
skies, and hills, and lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely 
come to me in more venerable characters, than as a gilded 
room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with 
handsome visible objects. I consider the clouds above me 
but as a roof beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the 
mind ; and at last, like the pictures of the apartments of a 
connoisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. 
So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beauties of 
nature, as they have been confidently called." On another 
occasion he says "For my part, with reference to my 
friends northward. I must confess that I am not romance- 
bit about nature. The earth and sea and sky (when all is 
said) are but as a house to dwell in." 

This is a very sincere picture of Lamb's mind with 
respect to nature, and the source of it is very natural — 
the entire separation from such scenes from childhood. It 
will rarely be found that any one, who has passed his 



148 

childhood in a great city, ever becomes a hearty lover of 
nature. Nature may astonish him, and he may frequently 
pay her visits; but he will do the same thing to a prodigy, 
and be moved in the same manner. Leigh Hunt said that 
a mind must be a poor one, which is affected by heaps of 
earth. "When a mountain is reduced to such a proposition 
as this, the inference is direct enough. There is no defect 
in the statement, nor in the deduction ; and it shows how 
unab]e philosophical truths may be to reach the correctness 
they aim at. When a citizen, pent among his riot and 
motion, describes a mountain as a heap of earth, the idea 
is correct enough. And a heap of earth, as it exists in 
the upturned thoroughfare of a city, is an object unimpres- 
sive enough. But when this heap of earth becomes as big 
as a county, " subject to all the skiey influences, " it has, as 
it were, received a soul ; the material becomes intellectual, 
and reacts upon mind. It is this transformation which 
the city-bred cannot realize, except in the actual presence ; 
and it was this defect which left Lamb uninquisitive after 
secrets among the noble retirements of nature. He has 
again and again repeated how dear every city association 
was to him. It had been the food on which his mind 
had fed from infancy. He had looked on the city as a 
constancy, on nature as an accident. We may become 
wearied of a continual succession of the same objects, but 
even this weariness is not a lasting feeling. Even a con- 
tinued succession of the same objects becomes in time more 
dear and more regarded than any change that can be 
substituted for it. It is chiefly in youth, while the 
mind is still in a state of growth, and unfixedness is the 



149 

whole condition of life, that the yearning for the new. and 
the untried, and the unseen prevails. But when once 
business, or marriage, or any other of the imperative con- 
ditions of existence is reached, the mind generally makes 
its election out of its circumstances, and remains true to 
its choice through life. 

Lamia's principal friends — Coleridge, Southey, Words- 
worth — were professed lovers of the country, especially 
"Wordsworth. We shall not go into the distinction of 
town and country taste now ; but we think it a highly 
important one. The assumption of rustic feelings and 
ideas is the chief principle that has been at work on 
modern poetical thought, and is indeed the great agent 
which has given character, and we may also add feeble- 
ness to the literature which has distinguished this century. 
The principle only affected Lamb indirectly, and indeed 
we are not sure that it was not a very fortunate circum- 
stance for him that he had such a low opinion of mountains 
and the country, and hence kept his attention so closely 
fixed on man and life, which were material more harmo- 
nious with his feelings. 

When Lamb, therefore, expressed his distaste for 
mountains, and openly put scenery among his indifferences, 
he only spoke out what others have concealed under a 
pretended regard. But, however, this was a constant con- 
fession with Lamb. He never thinks it in the least degree 
narrow-minded to set up London above every thing the 
country can produce. "Streets, markets, theatres, churches, 
Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of 
industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening, 



150 

gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the streets 
with spectacles, . . . lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks' 
and silver-smiths' shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, 
noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen at 
night, with bucks reeling home drunk ; if you happen to 
wake at midnight, cries of Eire and Stop Thief; inns of 
court, with their learned air, and halls, and galleries ; old 
book-stalls. These are thy pleasures, O London ! with the 
many sins. For these may Keswick and her giant's brood 
go hang." And in declining Wordsworth's invitation, he 
again returns to his taste; which, to such a sentimental 
worshipper of nature as Wordsworth, must have sounded 
like grating noises in his ear. " I have passed all my days 
in London, until I have formed as many and intense local 
attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done 
with dead nature. The lighted shops in the Strand 
and Fleet Street ; the innumerable trades, tradesmen and 
customers, coaches, wagons, playhouses; all the bustle and 
wickedness round about Covent Garden ; the very women 
of the town ; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles — life 
awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; the impos- 
sibility of being dull in Fleet Street ; the crowds, the very 
dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, 
the print shops, the old book-stalls, parsons cheapening 
books, coffee houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the 
pantomimes — London itself a pantomime and a masquerade 
— all these things work themselves into my mind, and feed 
me without a power of satiating me. The wonder of the 
sights impels me into night walks about her crowded 
streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from 



151 

feelings of joy at so much life. All these emotions must 
be strange to you; so are your rural emotions to me. But 
consider, what must I have been doing all my life, not to 
have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such 
scenes. " 

Yet, after all, in the following summer (1802) Lamb 
and his sister, without any announcement, started for the 
Lake country. Coleridge was then settled at Keswick, 
when his friends burst suddenly upon him. a He received 
us," says Lamb, "with all the hospitality in the world, and 
gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the 
country. He dwells upon a small hill, by the side of 
Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all 
sides by a net of mountains : gieat floundering bears and 
monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. . . We 
entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, 
when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their 
heads. Such an impression I never received from objects 
of sight before, nor do I suppose I can ever again. Glorious 
creatures, fine old fellows Skiddaw, &c. I never shall 
forget ye, how ye lay about that night like an enchant- 
ment ; gone to bed as it seemed for the night, but promising 
that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had 
got a blazing fire in his study, which is a large antique 
ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ . . and 
all looked out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw and 
his broad-breasted brethren : what a night ! " Thus the 
mountains anticipated and the mountains visited had 
played their old prank. But Lamb had mistrusted them, 
and therefore found them far more impressive than he 



152 

anticipated. " In fine, " he says farther on, " I have satis- 
fied myself that there is such a thing as that which tourists 
call romantic, which I very mach suspected before : they 
make such a sputtering about it, and toss their splendid 
epithets around them, till they give us as dim a light as 
four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an ilium ma- 
tron." They visited Grasmere, Ambleside, ITllswater, 
Helvellyn, and ascended Skicldaw. " Oh its fine black 
head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of 
mountains all about and about, making you giddy ; and 
then Scotland afar off, and the border countries, so famous 
in song and ballad ! It was a day that will stand out like 
a mountain, I am sure, in my life." This seems a very 
satisfactory apology for his former indifference. On first 
reading such enthusiastic passages, we are inclined to turn to 
such incidents as first love and conversion for their parallel. 
But, after all, it was but the surprise acting on a subdued 
rather than excited imagination. He writes to Coleridge 
on his return, " I feel I shall remember your mountains to 
to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am 
like a man who has been falling in love unknown to 
himself, which he finds out when he leaves the lady." 
"In his latter years," says Talfourd, "I have heard him, 
when longing after London, among the pleasant fields of 
Enfield, declare that his love of natural scenery would be 
abundantly satisfied by the patches of long waving grass, 
and the stunted trees, that blacken in the church-yard 
nooks, which you may yet find bordering on Thames 
Street." 

When Goldsmith said that the chief incidents in the 



153 

life of Dr. Primrose consisted in Lis migrations from the 
blue bed to the brown, lie noted a very large class of very 
important lives. Tbe men who Lave been of most value 
to society, Lave been the centres of the fewest exciting 
changes. Thinkers remain much in the same place, and 
interfere but little in the squabbles around them. Men, 
who are unimportant, whose lives are unfelt. and of whom 
it would have been no matter had they never lived, often 
stir adventure from her lowest depths, and make sufficient 
incidents out of half a century to set up a dozen novels. 
The life of Lamb was of the Dr. Primrose order. The 
principal events in his career were changes of lodging. 

sr I coo 

For although he was constitutionally averse to new places, 
yet like all city dwellers, he moved in a kind of orbit, and 
remained nowhere very long. In 1800 he made three 
changes in the course of the year, and settled at last in 
Mitre Court, which appeared to be the spot exactly to his 
taste. It is in the Temple, which has nearly two acres of 
garden, worthy of the name, where land is worth a million 
an acre, where there is architecture that Cambridge or 
Oxford might covet, and retired squares, and quiet col- 
legiate bull clings, and sheltery cloisters, and trees that are 
not sickened, even in the densest part of London, This 
fortunate island, in the midst of a- sea ever ebbing and 
flowing with traffic, where the great rumble of the waves 
of human action are ever murmuring, like breakers at a 
distance, was the home that Lamb had secured, when he 
left Southampton Buildings. But in 1809 he removed 
again. He did not however quit the precincts of the old 
Templars. "We remove," he says to his favorite corres- 



154 

pondent, Manning, " to JSFo. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where 
I mean to live and die ; for I have such a horror of roovimr, 
that I would not take a benefice from the King, if I was 
not indulged, with non-residence. What a dislocation of 
comfort is comprised in that word moving. Such a heap 
of nasty little things, after you think all is got into the 
cart : old dredging boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, 
vials, things that it is impossible the most necessitous 
person can ever want. . . Then you can find nothing 
you w-ant for many days after you get into your new 
lodgings. You must comb your hair with your fingers, 
wash your hands without soap, go about with dirty gaiters. 
Was I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into 
a hogshead though the first had had nothing but small beer 
in it and the second reeked claret." After removal, he thus 
describes his new abode. " My best room commands a 
court, in which there are trees and a pump, the water of 
which is excellent cold with brandy, and not very insipid 
without." He had here altogether seven rooms, and it was 
the favorite of all his many places of abode. He had 
reached a salary of more than £400 a year. He could 
indulge all the tastes sufficient for most of his inclinations. 
He was in the prime of life. He was popular with every 
body who knew him. His happy disposition and manners 
were becoming a misfortune, in as much as they attracted 
a constant succession of visitors, who, if they gratified 
themselves, deprived Lamb of his repose, and almost of 
his thoughts. His literary acquaintance were always on 
the increase, for death alone deprived him of old acquaint- 
ance, and new were always ready to seize the opportunity 



155 

of his offered hand. His biographers and rememberers 
unite in the opinion that the eight years, during which 
Lamb continued in Inner Temple Lane, were the happiest 
of his life — his spirits were gayest, his mind was easiest, 
his body win healthiest, and the friends of his youth had 
not begun to drop away. Yet these years produced 
nothing of importance from his pen. A few Essays for 
Leigh Hunt's Reflector, and a garbled Review in the 
Quarterly, are the sum of his literary labors. They are 
the most barren years of his whole life. They carried 
him from the age of thirty-four to the age of forty-two, 
and left behind them nothing but recollections. 

We may make a few remarks on the review in the 
Quarterly. It was Southey who proposed to Lamb that 
he should review the Excursion, which was first published 
in 1814. Lamb had always admired Wordsworth. Indeed 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were the only living 
poets he read ; for though many others sent him compli- 
mentary volumes, he generally valued them after the same 
kind of philosophy as FalstafT valued his soldiers, and 
" They will fill a shelf as well as better" was often all the 
attention he paid them. But Wordsworth was a far 
different person in his eyes ; for, besides the long friend- 
ship which had existed between them, there was a studied 
economy in his style, an absence of that sort of writing 
which is now called sensational, a humility and chastity in 
his subjects, which were all in accordance with Lamb's 
taste. Yv T hen, therefore, Southey proposed to hirn that he 
should undertake to introduce the long expected volume of 
his old friend to the public who read the Quarterly ', Lamb 



156 

had no scruples, but a fear lest lie should be scant of 
time to do justice to the volume. When the proposal was 
made he was working extra hours at the India Office. 
However, this was no matter. He was not fettered to a few 
weeks ; so he wrote the article, and sent it to Grifford. But 
time, that alters most things, seemed to ha ye no effect on the 
adamantine hatred of Grifford. The malicious spite of 1811 
was no less malicious in 1 8 1 4. The cynic had now the oppor- 
tunity of touching Lamb on the quick, and he seized the 
opportunity. Lamb had taken pains with the article. 
" Whatever inadequateness," he writes to Wordsworth, "it 
had to its subject, it was, in point of composition, the prettiest 
piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone 
I read the MS.) said." Gifford fell on it, however, with his 
shears, and cut down all its shapeliness, and left it weak, 
and lame, and inconsecutive. " More than a third of the 
substance is cut away, . . . putting his shoemaker 
phraseology instead of mine, which has been tinctured 
with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend ; 
— for I reckon myself a dab at prose ; — verse I leave to 
my betters. ... I read it at Arch's shop with my 
face burning with vexation secretly. . . . How are 
you served, and the labors of years turned into contempt 
by scoundrels ! . But I could not but protest 

against you taking that thing as mine. Every pretty 
expression (I know there were many) ; every warm 
expression (there was nothing else) is vulgarised and 
frozen. But if they catch me in their camps again, let 
them spitchcock me." 

Though Lamb had flattered himself that he was fixed 



157 

for life, when lie removed to his comfortable chambers in 
Inner Temple Lane, it was not so. After eight years lie 
quitted the Temple precincts for ever, after having passed 
thirty years out of forty-two of his life in one part or 
another of it. His new removal was to a far different 
scene. The Temple was learned, quiet, sedate, particular ; 
closed in at timely hours ; and, as it were, separated by 
manners and respectability, as well as by gates and porters, 
from the uproar that was continually beating against its 
surrounding walls. Lamb's new choice was Russell Street, 
Covent Garden. Here quiet had no abiding plnce, but 
Lamb himself can best describe it. " We are in the indi- 
vidual spot I like best in all this great city. The theatres 
with their noises. Covent Garden, dearer to me than any 
gardens of •Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the 
earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves 
are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not 
been here twenty. four hours before she saw a thief." This 
situation led Lamb to frequent the neighboring theatres 
pretty often, and to encourage the visits of his favorites 
on the boards. Yet no pleasure is pure. There are draw- 
backs which serve to make the strongest distillation of 
that intoxicating beverage somewhat watery. The con- 
venience of the theatres, and the diversion which such a 
busy centre as the neighborhood of Drury Lane and 
Covent Garden afforded, so increased the number of 
Lamb's visitors — always sufficiently troublesome — that 
they became absolute annoyance. "The reason why I 
cannot write letters at home," he tells Mrs. Wordsworth, 
" is that, I am never alone. Except my morning's walk 



158 

to the office, which is like treacling on sands of gold for 
that reason, I am never so. I cannot walk home from the 
office but some officious friend offers his unwelcome courte- 
sies to accompany me. . . . He at length takes his 
welcome leave at the door ; up I go, mutton on table, 
hungry as hunter, hope to forget my cares and bury them 
in the agreeable abstraction of mastication ; knock at the 
door, in comes Demi-gorgon, or somebody, to prevent my 
eating alone. . . . misanthropy, [ensues] a hatred of 
my interrupters, and with the hatred a still greater aver- 
sion to their going away. Bad is the dead sea they bring 
upon me, but worse is the dry sand they leave me on, if 
if they go before bed-time. ... I assure you that it 
is a wonderful week in which I can get two or one evening 
to myself. I am never C. L., but always C. L. & Co. . . 
All," he concludes, " I mean by this senseless interrupted 
tale, is, that by my central situation, I am a little over 
companied." 

Yet he held on in this situation for six years. The 
troubles of popularity increased during this time, by the 
general admiration which his Elia articles were exciting. 
Whether it was this, or some sudden wish for change is 
hardly apparent; but, in 1823, he took the sudden resolu- 
tion of becoming, for the first time of his life, a householder. 
He had hitherto been either an occupier of rooms, or a 
lodger. But now, for the first time, he had a house at 
Islington — "a white house with six good rooms," as Lamb 
himself describes it, "and behind is a spacious garden, 
with vines, (I assure you) pears, strawberries, parsnips, 
leeks, carrots, cabbages to delight the heart of old Alcinous, 



159 

. . . I feel like a great lord, never having had a house 
before. ... I am taken up with pruning and garden- 
ing, quite a new sort of occupation to me. . . . I do 
now sit under my own vine, and contemplate the growth 
of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what sense 
they speak of father Adam. I recognize the paternity, 
while I watch my tulips. I almost fell with him, for the 
first day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let in the 
serpent) into my Eden, and he laid about him. lopping off 
some choice boughs, &c., which hung over from a neighbor's 
garden, and in his blind zeal, laid waste a shade, which had 
sheltered their window from the gaze of passers by. The 
old gentlewoman (fury made her not handsome) could 
scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words. There was no 
buttering her parsnips. She talked of law. What a lapse 
to commit on the first day of my happy garden-state." 
Lamb had only been settled in this residence a short time 
when a curious incident occurred. He has himself narra- 
ted it in his own inimitable manner. It appears that the 
new river ran close by the house, without any protection 
against accidents ; and that George Dyer, who was a pro- 
found day-dreamer, and very short-sighted, was punished 
for his natural sins in the following manner : — " Yesterday 
week, George ].Dyer called upon us, at one o'clock, (bright 
noon day) on his way to dine with Mrs. Barbauld, at 
ISTewington. He sat with Mary about half-an-hour, and 
took leave. The maid saw him go out, from her kitchen 
window, but suddenly losing sight of him, ran up in a 
fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping the slip that 
leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad 



160 

open day, marched into the new river. He had not his 

spectacles on, and you know his absence. Who helped 
him out, they can hardly tell, but between 'em they got 
him out, drenched thro' and thro'. A mob collected by 
that time, and accompanied him in. 'Send for the Doctor,' 
they said, and a one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was 
fetched from the public house, where it seems he lurks, 
for the sake of picking up water-practice. . . . By 
his advice, the patient was put between blankets ; and 
when I came home at four, to dinner, I found G. D. 
a-becl, and raving, light-headed, with the brandy and 
water which the doctor had administered. He sung, 
coughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian 
angels, would get up and go home ; but we kept him 
there by force ; and by next morning he departed 
sobered, and seems to have received no injury." Lamb 
made this incident the subject of one of his Essays — 
Amicus Bedivivus — and it is not uninstructive to compare 
the two narratives, and see how the literal facts were 
played with and expanded, under the easy grace of his 
genius. 

The year 1825 was the opening of the last act of 
Lamb's life. Its first act had been his school-days at 
Christ's Hospital. Its second act was his India House 
clerkship, which lasted from 1792 to 1825. Its third and 
last act was his emancipation from business, with the 
liberty to do what he liked, and go where he liked. There 
are some instructive conclusions, or rather some conclusions 
that pass for instructive, in the promise of this event, and 
and its fulfilment. But we need not sermonize ; the 



161 

sermon and its application will be best delivered in its 
history. 

Even as early as 1805, when Lamb had only been 
about a dozen years in the India Office, he began to com- 
plain of his condition, — to think that there was somehow 
or other a peculiar form of injustice in grinding men into 
day-books and ledgers. " Business," he says, " is the 
invention of the old Teazer, whose interference doomed 
Adam to an apron, and set him a hoeing. Pen and ink, 
and clerks and desks, were the refinements of the old 
torturer some thousand years after, under pretence of 
commerce allying distant shores, &c." As years went on 
these complaints took a different tone. The weariness that 
seemed mere caprice at first, became connected with 
aching heads and sleepless nights. In 1814 he writes to 
Wordsworth, "I go back, and have for these many days 
past, to evening work, generally at the rate of nine hours 
a day. The nature of my work too, puzzling and hurrying, 
has so shaken my spirits, that my sleep is nothing but a 
succession of dreams of business I cannot do, of assistants 
that give me no assistance." The next year he says "I am 
cruelly engaged, and like to be. . . I never leave till 
four, and do not keep a holiday now once in ten times, 
where I used to keep all red-letter clays, and some Rve days 
besides, which I used to dub nature's holidays. 1 have 
had my day. I had formerly little to clo. So of the little 
that is left of life, I may reckon two-thirds as dead, for 
the time that a man may call his own is his life ; and hard 
work and thinking about it taint even the leisure hours. 
Earthquakes swallow up this mercantile city and 

M 



162 

its ' gripple merchants/ as Drayton hath it, ' born to be 
the curse of this brave isle ! ' I invoke this . 
because I am not fit for* an office." Then, writing to Mrs. 
Wordsworth, he speaks of a man whom he said he had 
instinctively shrunk from, because he believed him to be 
the head of an office. " I hate all such people, — account- 
ants, deputy-accountants. The dear abstract notion of the 
East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, 
rather poetical ; but, as she makes herself manifest by the 
persons of such beasts, I loathe and detest her as the 
scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon." In the spring 
of the following year (1809) he writes to Manning, "Next 
Monday is Whit Monday. What a reflexion. Twelve 
years ago, and I should have kept that and the following 
holiday in the fields a Maying. All those pretty pastoral 
delights are over. This dead, everlasting dead desk, — 
how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down ! This dead 
wood of a desk, instead of your living trees ! " "Hang 'em !" 
he writes to Coleridge, " My brain, skin, flesh, bone, car- 
case, soul, time is all theirs." Three years after this the 
burden of his employment is complained of in deeper tones. 
" I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty 
years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not 
subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it 
is to breathe the air of four pent walls, without relief, day 
after day, all the golden hours between ten and four, 
without interposition. Taedet me harum quotidianarum 
formarum, these pestilential clerk faces always in one's 
dish. Oh for a few years between the grave and the desk. 
I dare not whisper to myself a pension on this 



163 

side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years 
have sucked me dry. I had thought in a green old age to 

have retired to Ponder's End . . . toddling about 
between it and Cheshunt. . . . The hope is gone. I 
sit like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast 
against this thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some 
pulmonary affection may relieve me." To Bernard Barton 
— who like Lamb was employed at desk-work in a banking 
office — he makes the same complaints. But here he spoke 
to ears keenly alive to the disadvantages of the position, 
and in some measure blinded by poetic enthusiasm against 
the advantages which in worldly matters the desk secured. 
Barton wished to have his time to himself, in order to 
follow out literary ideas, and in one of his letters to Lamb 
he had expressed a wish to free himself from the desk, and 
trust to the support of his pen. In Lamb's answer, we 
see how keen worldly sense was always present to correct 
any overcharged fancy, and bring the unsubstantial back 
to earth. All his complaint and longing to be rid of his 
official drudgery vanishes in a moment, when the expression 
of it might have wrought serious mischief on the pros- 
pects of his friend. He seems hitherto to have been 
sporting with temporary feelings, and expending the fret- 
fulness created by an aching head or a deranged digestion, 
on the first object of annoyance that presented itself. 
'•'Throw yourself on the world without any rational plan 
of support, beyond what the chance employ of booksellers 
would afford you ! Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, 
from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon 
iron spikes. If you had but five consolatory minutes 



164 

between the desk and the bed, make much of them, rather 
than turn slave to the booksellers. . . . Keep to your 
bank, and your bank will keep you. Trust not to the 
public i you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything 
that worthy personage cares. I bless every star that 
Providence, not seeing good to make me independent, has 
seen it next good to settle me upon the stable foundation 
of Leadenhall. . . . Henceforth I retract all my fond 
complaints of mercantile employment ; look upon them as 
lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome 
dead timber of a desk, that makes me live. A little 
grumbling is a wholesome medicine for the spleen, but in 
my inner heart do I approve and embrace this our close, 
but unharrassing way of life." When this was written, 
the day that Lamb had so often in his half earnest way 
asked for and despaired of was approaching. In 1825 he 
reached the age of fifty, and some dim intimations had 
been made him, that the Directors were not unwilling to 
entertain his desire for release, should he apply for it in 
a formal way. In March he writes to Barton thus : — u I 
am sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation, 
that is to turn up my fortune, but round it rolls, and will 
turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, of becoming 
a gentleman at large ; but I am put off from day to day. 
I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted 
nor rejected. ... I am not conscious of the existence 
of friends, present or absent." The doubt and fear were over 
a few days after this was written. He gives Wordsworth 
the account of his good fortune in the following passages : — 
" Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting 



165 

in my own room at eleven o'clock this finest of all April 
mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the remainder 
of my life. ... I came home for ever on Tuesday in 
last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition 
overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life to eternity. 
I wandered about thinking I was happy, but 
feeling I was not. . . . Now when all is holiday there 
are no holidays. " This event, like some others in his life, 
Lamb made the subject of one of his Essays. The Super- 
anuated Man is the more valuable for being thus a picture 
sketched from reality. But as we go on, side by side with 
him, and year by year, we see that the happiness that 
appeared in the distance to be hedged round with desks and 
ledgers, was hardly more approachable when this blockade 
was removed. Uneasiness did not cease her importunities 
after she had been petted. There was still something 
wanting, which was felt the more keenly, since it was not 
known what it was. When it was tangible, it was relieved 
by railing; but who can rail against an unknown ill ? The 
leisure he obtained did not become literary leisure ; for he 
wrote less after his emancipation, when he had days and 
weeks on hand, than he did when he could only snatch 
literary moments in the intervals of business, and among 
the pestering of friends. He was productive when he had 
little time, and barren when he had much. His one talent 
was more fruitful than ten talents. He seemed only to 
take up his pen at some temporary and often trumpery 
request. Some of his most tiresome and successful stimu- 
lators to work were ladies. At that time an album was 
as indispensible to a young lady as a necklace or a brooch. 



166 

She plied all her acquaintance for contributions, and if she 
could wheedle a veteran writer out of a poem or a riddle, 
it was almost as highly valued as a conquest over a rival 
in love. Lamb was good-natured, compliant, and therefore 
a victim. For eight years after his freedom, he wrote 
scarcely anything except for these literary pests; and 
album verses, and acrostics were the chief fruits which 
unlimited literary leisure produced. It was not that the 
rich vein of his humour was exhausted ; for, in his corres- 
pondence, it was poured forth in all its' original abundance. 
But there were two things absolutely necessary to set 
Lamb's pen a moving. He required some tie, or obligation, 
some contract to awaken his desire to write ; and then, 
for a subject, he required some reality to set it off. A 
slight matter was enough. When once the microscopic 
fact started up, the pen would immediately expand it in 
all directions, and set wonder agog over it. But he was 
not like authors who have made writing their business, 
and are obliged to cover paper from an empty, as well as 
from a full mind. It was come day, go day with his life ; 
and whether his pen moved or stood still was indifferent 
to his daily bread. It is this daily bread literature that is 
our bane. It crams the market with commodity almost 
as perishable as the gay and sweet-smelling offerings of 
Covent Garden. That which was bought at a high price 
to-day is in the kennel to-morrow. But perhaps it is best 
so. The thoroughly prized and permanent production is 
only so from its scarcity. 

"When Lamb's release left him free to choose a new 
residence wherever he liked, he was living at Islington, and 



167 

he continued to live there during four succeeding years. 
But Islington is in London, and though not so convenient 
for visitors as the Temple or Covent Garden, it was too 
convenient for the health of Miss Lamb, and the excitable 
propensities of her brother. They varied their life by 
sometimes retiring from company to Enfield ; and as these 
occasional retirements acted beneficially both on brother 
and sister, it was in 1829 determined to settle at Enfield. 
This was a wrench for Lamb. It was the first time he 
had cast on London entirely; and though he found himself 
in the paradise of rural poets — with farms, hay-stacks, 
lanes, meadows, and altogether, as he used to say, a 
country as good as Westmoreland, yet, as he writes in a 
subsequent letter to Barton, "Let me congratulate you on 
the spring coming in, and do you in return condole with 
me on the winter going out. I dread the prospect of 
summer, with all his all-day-long days. No need of his 
assistance to make country places dull. With fire and 
candle-light, I can dream myself in Holborn. With 
lightsome skies, shining in to bed-time, I cannot. This 
Meshek, and these tents of Kedar — I would dwell in the 
skirts of Jerico rather, and think every blast of the 
coming in mail a ram's horn. Give me old London at 
fire and plague time, rather than these tepid gales, healthy 
country air, and purposeless exercise." Yet London itself 
was turning its back on him. He expresses this sensi- 
tively, after a visit to it in the same year that he removed 
to Enfield. " When I took leave of our young friend at 
Charing Cross 'twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had 
nowhere to go. Home have I none, and not a sympa- 



168 

thizing bouse to turn to in the great city. . . . Yet 
I tried ten days at a sort of a friend's house . . . and 
got home on Thursday, convinced that I was better to get 
home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my 
corner. And to make me more alone, our ill-tempered 
maid is gone ; who, with all her airs, was yet a home-piece 
of furniture, a record of better days. The young thing 
that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is 
nothing. . . Scolding and quarrelling have something 
of familiarity and a community of interest \ they imply 
acquaintance ; they are of resentment, which is of the 
family of dearness. I can neither scold nor quarrel at 
this insignificant implement of household services ; she is 
less than a cat, and just better than a deal dresser. What 
I can do and do over- do is to walk ; but deadly long are 
the days, these summer all-day days, with but half-an-hour's 
candle-light, and no fire-light." And then at last he turns 
to the moral of the aspirations that beckoned him for ten 
years with a variety of seducing shadows. Barton, to 
whom he is writing, had been complaining of over work. 
" I pity you for over work, but, I assure you, no work is 
worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome 
food. I bragged formerly that I could not have too much 
time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the 
days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. 
I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. I am a 
sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inch-meal 
just now." But like a sick man, who cannot find ease in 
any position, and continually shifts from side to side, 
Lamb had tried a change of situation ; but finding that 



169 

still irksome, now shifted from a house occupier to a lodger. 
" After sad spirits," he writes to "Wordsworth in 1830, 
" prolonged through many of its months, [the last year] 
we have cast our skins ; have taken a farewell of the 
pompous, troublesome trifle called housekeeping, and are 
settled down into poor boarders and lodgers. 
Here we have nothing to do with our victuals, but to eat 
them * with the garden, but to see it grow • with the tax- 
gatherer, but to hear him knock ; with the maid, but to 
hear her scolded. . . . Yet, in the self-condemned 
obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings 
of life, not quite killed, rise, prompting me that there was 
a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In 
dreams I am in Fleet market, but I wake and cry to sleep 
again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable 
Paraclete. What have I gained by health? Intolerable 
dullness. . . . O never let the lying poets be believed, 
who 'tice men from the cheerful haunts of streets, or think 
they mean it not of a country village. In the ruins of 
Palmyra, I could gird myself up to solitude, or muse to 
the snorings of the Seven Sleepers ■ but to have a little 
teazing image of a town about one ; country folks that do 
not look like country folks ; shops two yards square, half 
a dozen apples and two penn'orth of overlooked ginger- 
bread for the lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street." This was 
followed by another trial of London. Lamb took lodgings 
in Southampton Buildings, one of his old localities. But 
the experiment did not answer. The illness of his sister 
ensued, and he again returned to Enfield. His last resi- 
dence was Edmonton. He moved thither in 1833. In 



170 

the middle of tlie following year, lie received one of the 
severest losses he could receive in the death of Coleridge • 
for though the health of Coleridge had prevented many 
meetings for some time before he died, yet the very idea of 
Coleridge being dead seemed to occur like returning fits, and 
ho was often heard to murmur to himself i Coleridge is dead.' 
In less than half a year Lamb followed him. Coleridge 
died in July. In the latter part of December Lamb was 
taking his daily morning walk on the London road, when 
his foot caught against a stone. He fell, and bruised his 
face. The hurt seemed slight, and was apparently healing ; 
when erysipelas set in \ and, in a few days, he expired. 
He was in his sixtieth year. 

There was one work which employed Lamb during 
the first flush of his liberty, and while the habit of effort 
was still strong on him, that remains to be noticed. He 
took the Confidant of Crabbe for a subject, and dramatised 
it. It is only in two acts, and though it was never pro- 
duced, we are not sure that it does not display a larger 
fund of stage capability than either of the pieces he 
professedly wrote for the theatre. The tale is one of the 
most remarkable of Crabbe's writings. It is founded on 
the seduction of the wife of a yeoman, before her marriage. 
This unfortunate circumstance is unknown to her husband ; 
but known to a female intimate, who uses the value of 
this secret to torture and prey upon the woman who has 
become her supporter. Lamb has perhaps erred in altering 
the chief source of the action of the piece. Crabbe has, 
we think, wisely placed it in the actual degradation of the 
wife before marriage, Lamb in merely a pre-contract. The 



171 

first being unknown to her husband, is really a sufficient 
cause for the terror of the wife, lest it be revealed to him, 
and for the consequent tyranny which the one confidant, 
who knows of it, exercises over her victim. But a betrothal 
has not this power. Husbands may be very jealous when 
their wives' virtues are in danger ; but they generally care 
little whether they have given up a former suitor to take 
them, if anything, they are rather nattered by it. In 
other respects, this piece shows what an advantage it was 
to Lamb to have his incidents ready at hand, and how 
grandly he might have written on dramatic subjects, had 
he possessed the art of settling his idealities in fortunate 
situations. Even the alteration he has made in the wife's 
trial shows his defect in this quality. He has manifestly 
materially weakened the piece by it,— nay almost made it 
silly. 

And there is another literary treasure that we have 
received from him, which claims a share in the reputation 
of Elia. His correspondence is often but the rough drafts 
of those transcendent essays. It has often the same rich- 
ness, humor, ease, seriousness. It has a beautiful way- 
wardness, that is continually slipping out the mind and 
the intellect. It is never formal and preconcerted, like 
the letters of Pope and Horace Yvalpole, and Zvladam cle 
Sevigne and Lady Wortley Montague, but slips on without 
effort, and, in fact, talks to you face to face. Cowper's 
letters are in some respects of the same kind, but the 
humor of Cowper was always bound over to keep the 
peace, — he never went above or beyond well-defined limits, 
and he often impresses his reader with some of his own 



172 

serious, unnecessary discomfort. Lamb never does so. 
He is sometimes serious enough • but the suppression of 
gaiety ably provides for its accumulation. It always has its 
share of joke and pleasantry at last. The sentimental had 
only a plot of Lamb's face. The chief part of that domain 
belonged to mirth and sagacity — we might say wisdom. 
When we read such letters as those of Walpole or Pope, 
we find set thoughts in set phraseology to whomsoever 
written. They formally address them to Lady Mary, or 
Horace Mann ; but they are really addressed to posterity. 
Pope was as particular in polishing a sentence in a letter, 
as he was in polishing a couplet in his Prologue to the 
Satires. The thought never strays out of him in its 
natural loose attire. It is always washed, and dandled, 
like the young heir of a family setting up for gentility. 
Horace Walpole was scarcely less finical. He conceived 
an idea of the necessity of correspondence different from 
that of Pope, and he followed out his conception. This 
was, that it should be easy, gossippy, garrulous ; — that it 
should run on glibly, and reflect the lazy indifference of 
the mind, rather than its serious cravings. All this is 
done, and well done in Walpole. But though the theory 
has interdicted art, art is nowhere more apparent than in 
Walpole. The ease is taken pains with, the gossip is 
touched and Walpolised, the garrulity is thrown into 
chosen words, that take away all its insipidity. All this 
is not censurable, but laudable. It is much better to have 
such a body of well mixed correspondence, than the general 
stuff which goes under that name, and which has crowded 
hundred of volumes with trash during the last sixty years. 



173 

But Lamb, without any of the carefulness of Pope or 
Walpole, has, in his best letters, done better than either. 
He is not so equable as Walpole ■ for sometimes he is 
merely a verbal critic, suggesting a new word or a new 
line in compositions we care nothing about. But he has 
a quality which is wanting by necessity in writers, who 
divide their attention between their correspondents and 
posterity, and give their ideas to the one, and the setting 
of their ideas to the other. Lamb's manner varies with 
the person he addresses. He is serious, critical, confes- 
sional, deferential according to his correspondents. Then 
he is despondent, querulous, fictions according to himself. 
But, with all these differences, he mingles the central 
element of his genius, humor. And sometimes humor 
flows on without any alloy, brandishing its wooden sword 
and its blunt dagger at the follies of mankind. And 
sometimes with inimitable power it hits off a character, by 
noting its trivial and fainter lines, where it almost vanishes 
into commonplace, but not sufficiently so to be obscure. 

On a visit to his friend Lloyd, in 1799, who was then 
at Cambridge, Lamb was introduced to a mathematical 
tutor there, Mr. Thomas Manning. They appear to have 
met together at some of those hearty college parties, which 
leave their flavor in the mind for ever. They are the 
freest meetings in life — no formalities, no restraints but 
the wholesome ones of good sense and hearty enjoyment, 
where that quality is not quite obliterate. Here Lamb 
was in his element. Manning appears to have been an 
exquisite mimic, and the most engaging personage among 
many. Lamb was so pleased with him, that he asked him 



174 

to remember him now and then with a letter, — a hint 
which opened up the most joyously frolicsome corres- 
pondence in our literature. Taken altogether, we have no 
such madcap and sportive epistles — so rich in wild, happy, 
humorous delineation as these letters to Manning. Lamb 
was perhaps more unrestrained to him than to Coleridge, 
after the first chill of growing friendship was removed. 
Though Manning was a mathematician, and Lamb had no 
more of that subtle science than sufficed to adjust the 
balances of his day-books ; yet the very polar oppositions 
of their tastes and studies seemed to draw them together, 
and Manning soon became almost a necessity to Lamb. 
He wrote to him of his house-changes, his excursions, his 
travels, his literary doings, and literary projects, and their 
results. A year or two after they became acquainted, 
Manning began to talk of visiting China. He did not 
carry it out until 1806, when he went to the celestial 
kingdom, and was absent about a dozen years. When he 
was still hesitating, Lamb wrote to him in the following 
gay humor : — " My dear friend, think what a sad pity it 
would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among 
nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people. Some 
say they are cannibals ; and then conceive a Tartar fellow 
eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard 
and vinegar ! I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has 
misled you ; his foolish stories about Cambuscan, and the 
ring, and the horse of brass. Belie ve me there are no 
such things, 'tis all the poet's invention. . . . Read 
no books of voyages (they are nothing but lies), only now 
and then a romance to keep the fancy under." In 1806, 



175 

Lamb had to shake hands with him on his departure, and 
felt, he says, "just like having shaken hands with a wretch 

on the fatal scaffold." He had been away nine years; 
when, on Christmas day, 1815, Lamb wrote to him one of 
the most original specimens of Lis delightful genius. 
" This is Christmas day, 1815, with us; what it may be 
with you I don't know, the 12th June next year perhaps; 
and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I 
don't know how you can keep it. You have no turkeys ; 
you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a 
withered Chinese bantam instead of the savory grand 
norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all round my nostrils at 
this moment from a thousand tire-sides. ... I feel, 
I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide. My zeal is 
great against the unedified heathen. Down with the 
Pagodas — down with the idols — Ching-chong-fo— and his 
foolish priesthood ! Come out of Babylon, oh my friend ! 
for her time is come, and the child that is native, and the 
Proselyte of her gates shall kindle and smoke together ! 
And in sober sense what makes you so long from among 
us, Manning I You must not expect to see the same 
England again which you left. Empires have been over- 
turned, crowns trodden into dust, the face of the western 
world quite changed. Your friends have all got old — 
those you left blooming. . . . Scarce here and there 
one will be able to make out your face ; all your opinions 
will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected 
with fastidiousness, as the wit of the last age. Your way 
of mathematics has already given way to a new method." 
In this way he runs on. with a slight flavor of satire and 



176 

seriousness oozing out of this unbounded falsehood, — but 
it is a falsehood • which if true, would be terribly pathetic, 
and all it needs to make it true is but a few more revolu- 
tions of the sun. It was then pleasant banter, it is now 
in a great measure serious fact. So nearly are our smiles 
akin to our tears. 

Lamb showed in his Elia, that although a light frost 
of satire covered some of his allusions, he had a sincere 
respect for the Quakers, and even sympathized with those 
parts of their system which, in the mutable fashions of 
the world, seem absurd. This was only another symptom 
of that taste, which eschewed the violent and loud in 
everything, — in poetry, in politics, in religion, in debate, 
in character. But though Lamb's Quaker inclinations 
went as far as one apart from the Society can go and keep 
apart; yet he had not hesitated to show, that their cool 
regard for right might sometimes run into the meshes of 
dishonesty. The anecdote was told in Imperfect Sympathies, 
and called up a remonstrance from Bernard Barton, 
the Quaker poet. This led to a correspondence ; which, 
in the latter part of Lamb's life, became quite characteris- 
tic. By far the greater number of published letters after 
1822 are to Bernard Barton. In these mirth, complaint, 
advice, and criticism are blended. They are not so 
high-spirited as those to Manning, but they are always 
brightened with gleams of that ever-present gaiety, that 
never allowed the worst aspects of life to continue long in 
their state of torment. The execution of Fauntelroy, in 
1824, for forgery, led him into the following strain. He 
had been telling Barton what an excitement it would 



177 

create if a Quaker were to be hanged. " I tremble, I am 
sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims 
of the law, at one time of their life, made as sure of never 
being hanged, as I, in my presumption, am too ready to do 
myself. What are we better than they? Do we come 
into the world with different necks I Is there any dis- 
tinctive mark under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable, 
I ask you ? Think of these things. I am shocked some- 
times at the shape of my own fingers, not for their 
resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something), but for 
the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, 
fingering, (fee." 

If we were to select from the whole body of English 
correspondence a letter that contained the greatest quantity 
of rare intellectual power, we should select the following, 
addressed to Mr. Dyer. It relates to the Swing fires, when 
during the first reform agitation, in 1831, the corn-stacks, 
from one end of the country to the other, were fired by rustics, 
as was supposed, who resorted to this desperate method 
of enJiffhteninff their masters on the necessity for reform. 
" Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has 
caught the inflammatory fever ; the tokens are upon her \ 
and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and 
haystacks of a farmer about half a mile from us. Where 
will these things end \ There is no doubt of its being the 
work of some ill-disposed rustic, but how is he to be 
discovered % They go to work in the dark with strange 
chemical preparations, unknown to our forefathers. There 
is not even a dark lantern, to have a chance of detect- 
ing these Guy Fauxes. We are past the iron age, 

N 



178 

and are got into the fiery age, undreamed of by Ovid, 
You are lucky in Clifford's Inn, where I think you have 
few ricks or stacks worth the burning. Pray keep as 
little corn as you can for fear of the worst. It was never 
good times in England since the poor began to speculate 
on their condition. Formerly they jogged on with as 
little reflection as horses. The whistling ploughman went 
cheek by joul with his brother that neighed. Now the 
biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather breeches, 
and in the dead of night the half-ilium mated beast steals 
his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half the 
country is grinning with new fires. Farmer Greystock 
said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, 
and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to 
intoxicate his crude brains, muddlingly alive to perceive 
that something is wrong in the social system, — what a 
hellish faculty above gunpowder ! Now rich and poor are 
fairly pitted. We shall see who can hang or burn fastest. 
It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings. 
There is a love of exciting mischief. Think of a dis- 
respected clod, that was trod into earth ; that was nothing ; 
on a sudden by damned arts refined into an exterminating 
angel, devouring the fruits of the earth and their growers 
in a mass of fire ! What a new existence ! What a temp- 
tation above Lucifer's ! Would clod be anything but a 
clod, if he could resist it ] Why, here was a spectacle last 
night for a whole country, a bonfire visible to London, 
alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the monument 
with an ague fit, all done by a little vial of phosphor in a 
clown's fob. How he must grin, and shake his empty 



179 

noddle in clouds ! The Vulcanian epicure ! Alas, can we 
ring the bells backwards \ Can we unlearn the arts that 
pretend to civilize, and then burn the world ] There is a 
march of science, but who shall beat the drums for its 
retreat I Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will 
not ignite 1 Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns 
proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man 
and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of 
asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of 
the earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say, 
i Faimus panes, fuit quartern loaf, et ingens gloria apple- 
pasty-orum.' 1 That the good old munching system may 
last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George, is the 
devout prayer of thine, to the last crust, C. Lamb." There 
is no essay in Bacon equal to this. Xot one so full of 
that deep philosophy, which is his excellence. Not one so 
crammed with melancholy, but profound wisdom. And 
yet it is not without its liveliness. There are sparkles in 
in the midst of its gloom like diamonds on crape. 

During Lamb's best days, when he resided in the 
Temple and in Russell Street, he entered into a kind of 
compact with his closest friends, that, instead of straying 
on him at all kinds of accidental times and hours, they 
should rally round him in a body on Wednesday evenings. 
It was then that such men as Hazlitt, Hunt, Godwin, 
Talfourd, occasionally Coleridge, Barry Cornwall, Basil 
Montague, George Dyer; sometimes Liston or Munden 
might be met, with men of less note, who were not 
unnecessary supplements to their distinguished companions. 
It was here that discussions on themes generally literary 



180 

were carried on with an expansiveness and acuteness, that 
has often made their hearers wish they could have been 
transferred to paper by means of those potent magicians, 
who nil the pages of the Times with the dullness of 
country squires, and half-made politicians. But the most 
part of these debates has vanished, like the monologues of 
Coleridge, and like them they have had their effect, though 
the effect is altogether undetected. The room, as well as 
the company, in which these unions took place, has had its 
chronicler ; and we can easily picture a moderate sized 
apartment, fitted to accommodate a dozen persons, its low 
ceiling somewhat stained with tobacco smoke, with plain 
furniture, and the walls hung with the half dozen prints 
of the Marriage a la mode of Hogarth, and some others ; 
among which, in plain black frames, were one by Leonardo 
la Vinci ; and another, we almost think the Bacchus and 
Ariadne of Titian. At one, and sometimes two tables sat 
one or two whist parties, eager as Mrs. Battle in the game ; 
and Lamb himself was generally foremost in the conflict 
of clubs and spades. On a side table, a cold joint or two 
was set out, flanked with roasted potatoes, and a foaming 
jug of porter. Discussion went on here alongside the games, 
and it on]y occasionally broke through the skirmish of retort 
and epigram into a serious battle of intellect. It was 
then that each one displayed his peculiar excellence; — 
Lamb in condensing a wandering argument by means of 
turning its wings upon its centre ; — Hazlitt in throwing 
into it the fire either of illumination or annihilation ; — 
Hunt by a genial interpretation, which gave grace to 
what it had often little power to overrule ; — and, if 



181 

Coleridge were present, all would, for half an hour, sus- 
pend their eagerness to follow the subject as it struck 
out a wisp of light among the flats of German philosophy. 
Hazlitt has recorded the discussion of one evening, when 
he was present. His account, which is rather long, is 
interesting for opening out the subject pretty much as it 
occurred, and giving us a specimen of the most flighty of 
intellectual revelations. Briefly it was as follows : — Lamb 
had stained the question; — who are the persons one would 
wish to have seen ) Ayrton, one of the guests, imme- 
diately suggested ZSTewton and Locke. Lamb's face 
betrayed impatience and courtesy as he stammered i Yes, 
the greatest names, but they were not persons, — not 
persons.' Ayrton was astonished at this, and Lamb con- 
tinued ; not characters. Locke is the Essay, Xewton the 
Principia, we want to see one bodily^ when there is some- 
thing peculiar in the individual more than we can learn 
from his writings. Locke and Xewton are very like 
Kneller's portraits; but who could paint Shakspere]' 
'Them' said Ayrton, 'you would prefer Shakspere and 
Milton.' -Xo,' returned Lamb, 'I have seen so much of 
Shakspere on the stage, and on book-stalls, and in frontis- 
pieces ; and Milton's face, as it has come clown to us, I do 
not like. It is too stiff, too puritanic. I should lose the 
manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance.' 
Here Ayrton gave up, and said he would guess no more. 
Lamb then named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville 
as the men whom he would prefer to see. At this Ayrton 
laughed, and thought Lamb was at one of his usual jests. 
But other parts of the company knew their host better, 



182 

They saw that he was serious, and when no one joined 
Ayrton in his mirth, he thought there might be something 
in the choice. Then Lamb explained that why he named 
them was that they were mysteries, and resembled sooth- 
sayers, who dealt in hints and oracles, and that he would 
like to question them on the meaning of their sayings. 
He felt, he said, no curiosity after Dr. Johnson ; as, by 
means of Boswell, we had the mind of the positive moralist 
quite opened out to us. But he would disturb the repose 
of the implicit, the inextricable, the inscrutable. ' When 
I look/ continued Lamb, 6 at that obscure but gorgeous 
prose composition, the Urn Burial, I seem to myself to 
look into a deep abyss, at the bottom of which are hid 
pearls and rich treasure ; or it is like a stately labyrinth of 
doubt and withering speculation, and I would invoke the 
spirit of the author, to lead me through it. Besides, who 
would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man, who, 
having himself been twice married, wished that mankind 
were propagated like trees. As to Fulke Greville, he is like 
nothing but one of his own Prologues, spoken by the ghost 
of an old king of ^Ormus — a truly formidable and inviting 
personage. His style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot 
worthy of such an apparition to ivntie.' Donne was then 
mentioned as another writer of mysteries, and the book 
was handed down and passages read in proof. On Chaucer 
being named, Ayrton dissented on account of his rugged 
metre, and quaint phraseology. However, most of the 
company expressed a desire to see the old father, and 
Hazlitt especially vindicated the author of the Canterbury 
Tales, and placed him beside Boccacio. He then turned to 



183 

Dante, who, lie said, ' is as interesting a person as his own 
Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly 
devour, in order to penetrate his spirit, and he is the only 
one of the Italian poets I should care much to see.' Lamb 
asked him, if he would not desire to see Spenser, as well 
as Chaucer. Hazlitt replied 'ISTo, for his beauties are 
ideal, visionary ; not palpable or personal, and therefore 
connected with less curiosity about the man. His poetry 
is the essence of romance, a halo round the orb of fancy, 
and the individual might destroy the charm. Iso tones of 
voice can come up to the cadence of his verse, no form 
but a winged angel vie with the airy shapes he described.' 
Captain Bumey then suggested Columbus, and Martin 
Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew. But Columbus 
was handed over to the Americans, and the Jew rejected 
as spurious. Mrs. Reynolds asked for Pope chatting with 
Patty Blount. "When Lamb acquiesced, Ayrton said that 
he thought he of the lake school did not like Pope. Lamb 
said he could read him over for ever. Ayrton said that the 
Essay on Man is a masterpiece. ' I seldom look at it/ 
returned Lamb. ' Then you admire the Satires,' continued 
Ayrton. ' No, not the Satires,' returned Lamb, ' but his 
friendly epistles and compliments.' Ayrton said, 'I did not 
know he ever made any compliments. ' * Oh yes,' said Lamb, 
' the finest ever paid by the wit of man, — each worth an 
estate for life, — nay each is an immortality.' Dry den was 
rejected because he made a show of himself, and sat in a 
coffee house to be seen. Pope reached the ideal of a poet's 
life; for he not only lived to obtain his fame, but his fame 
made him rewarded, as the world rates reward. Junius, 



184 

Fielding, Richardson, Cromwell, Bunyan, Garrick, 
Webster and others were canvassed, and discriminating 
opinions passed on them; when Lamb asked Hazlitt if he 
would wish to see any one who had been hanged. Hazlitt 
said Eugene Aram. The admirable Crichton was named, 
at which a Scotchman present was highly delighted, and 
said he was descended from him, and had family plate in 
his possession as vouchers for the fact, which were inscribed 
A. C. At this innocent conceit, Leigh Hunt roared with 
laughter. Then an array of metaphysicians and painters 
followed, with such famous obscures as the Duchess of 
Newcastle — Lamb's favorite; Mrs. Hutchinson, Ninon 
de V Enclos. 

Don Quixote being proposed, Hunt objected to heroes, 
aud continued, c What say you Mr. Lamb i Are you for 
eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, 
Tamerlane, Ghengis Khan?' 'Excuse me,' said Lamb, 
6 on the subject of characters in active life, plotters, and 
disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, 
which I beg leave to reserve.' 'No, no, come out with 
your worthies,' interposed several voices.' ' Then what do 
you think of Judas Iscariot and Guy Fawkes ;' and when 
called on to give his reason, Lamb replied that he thought 
Guy was ill-used, and as to Judas Iscariot, ' I would fain 
see the face of him; who, having dipped his hand in the 
same dish with the son of man, could afterwards betray 
him. I have no conception of such a thing, nor have I 
ever seen any picture — not even Leonardo's very fine 
one — that gave me the least idea of it. There is only 
one other person I can ever think of after this,' proceeded 



185 

Lamb, but without mentioning a name, 'that once put on 
the semblance of mortality. If Shakspere were to come 
into the room, we should all rise up to meet him ; but, if 
that person were to come into it, we should all fall down, 
and try to kiss the hem of his garment.' Such is the 
outline of one Wednesday night's discussion. But we 
must hasten to our conclusion. 

Sydney Smith, Rogers, Moore, Theodore Hook, 
and Lamb all belonging to the same period, were all 
variously celebrated for their striking sayings and replies. 
It would scarcely be presenting Lamb under all his promi- 
nent aspects to omit this descriptive singularity • though it 
generally happens that retorts, which were felt to be brilli- 
ant when delivered with the heat of an argument warm in 
every mind around, or when gaiety was relaxing the spirits 
of all, are comparatively dull when they have to prepare 
their own way to "appreciation. Few jokes can bear the 
cold ; and many of Lamb's derived so much of their life 
from the accidents among which they were brought forth, 
that those who heard them from the speaker's mouth agree 
that it is impossible to give anything but a vague notion 
of their spirit by relating them. This description does 
not apply to all. Many still retain much of the spirit 
that produced them, and are remarkable for an entire 
absence of ill-nature. We have already proceeded to such 
a length that we can only select a few. But as this is the 
part of Lamb's history wdiich is most generally known, 
there is less need to do any more than just indicate their 
nature, which generally turned on a pun when it was not 
based on humor. 



186 

One evening, when the whole nation was divided on 
the subject of Queen Caroline, and her trial was going on, 
the conversation turned on the evidence against her, 
especially that of Majocchi. Lamb said he would like to 
see the Italian witnesses, he would ask them to supper. 
Talfourd said, 'You would not sit with them.' 'Yes/ 
said Lamb, 'I would sit with anything but a hen or a 
tailor.' 

One night Lamb wanted to demonstrate that the 
Man-t-chou Tartars were Cannibals, and that the Chinese 
were identical with the Cel-tes (Sell Teas). 

Edward Irving and Lamb had once been listening to 
an oration of Coleridge. The divine naturally wished to 
be made clearer on some of Coleridge's points, or to dis- 
pute them altogether ; but found it hopeless to attempt to 
wedge in a word. He left with Lamb, half hipped at the 
everlasting stream of words he had been listening to, and 
asked his companion if he could ever get in a word with 
Coleridge. l 2$ — n — no,' said Lamb, stuttering, 'I never 
wish.' 'Why perhaps it is better not,' said the divine. 

Martin Burney was one evening describing the three 
kinds of acids ; when Lamb interrupting said, ' The best 
kind of acid, however, you know, Martin, is assid-uity.' 

Lamb himself has told the following anecdote : — " We 
travelled with one of those troublesome fellow passengers 
in a stage coach, that is called a well-informed man. For 
twenty miles we discoursed about the properties of steam, 
probabilities of carriages by ditto, till all my science, and 
more than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of 
-escaping my torment by getting up on the outside ; when, 



187 

getting into Bishop's Stortford niy gentleman, spying some 
farming land, put an unlucky question to me, what sort of 
a crop of turnips I thought we should have this year I 
Emma's eyes turned on me to know what in the world I 
could haye to say ; and she burst into a yiolent fit of 
laughter, when with the greatest'gravity I replied that i it 
depended, I belieyed, upon boiled legs of mutton.' This 
clenched our conyersation." 

" An old woman begffed of me for charity. 'Ah sir/ 

Co u * 

said she, 'I haye seen better days.' 'So haye I good 
woman,' I replied, glancing at the clouds, which were 
raining hard at the time." 

Martin Bumey was one night playing at whist, with 
hands by no means so flesh-colored as they ought to haye 
been. 'If dirt were trumps, Martin,' said Lamb, 'what 
hands you would hold.' 

Coleridge was one eyening pouring forth his stream 
of words, and running before the wind, catching every 
side subject as he went, when he veered round and turned 
on Shrewsbury. ' There,' he said, ' I was accustomed to 
preach, and, by the by, Charles, you never heard me 
preach, did you ? ' ' I — I — never heard you do anything 
else/ returned Lamb, stammering over the words. 



Lamb, like most men of genius, was undersized. 
Moreover, his undersized frame was slinily built, with legs 
thin and wasted, and arms that hung loosely in their 
sleeves. But the head, which crowned this feeble body, 
had accepted none of its denials. It was bold and capa- 
cious enough to hold the matter of a Hamlet or the 



188 

Canterbury Tales. His eyes were slightly brown, and 
twinkling with something of wildness or anxiety in them, 
as if some fright had just passed over the features — some- 
thing that you would not be disappointed if it occurred in 
one whose intellects were unsettled. The portraits of him 
convey this impression. His forehead was a noble portal, 
worthy of the mansion it fronted. His hair was crispy 
black \ and around a small mouth, closed by thin nervous 
lips, a number of lines and furrows threw up the cheek 
bones, and indicated to what a depth the miseries of life 
had ploughed. Yet, about these lines, shading and mitiga- 
ting their force, pliant curves of humor and almost laughter 
spread, breaking up the hard lines of sorrow, and mingling 
them with tracings of pleasure and tranquil thought. 
When these interesting features were lighted up by one of 
Lamb's smiles, the impression is said to have been exceed- 
ingly sweet, sweeter some of his friends say than they 
ever witnessed on any other face. In dress Lamb was 
invariable. He always wore black, with black gaiters. 
He carried a snuff-box, but we are not .told that he was at 
all immoderate in the use of it. 

The character of Lamb had nothing in it intricate or 
puzzling. It was a clear and pleasant union of many 
points that we admire, with few that even the severest 
moralist has passed a very hard sentence upon. Amiable 
was not the word to describe that which could sometimes 
be sharp and ruffled ; nor would variable suit one, who, 
although he might not be always alike, yet never departed 
so widely from the standard he had set up, as to lose 
sight of it ; nor was fluctuating much more appropriate, 



189 

for no one who knew him ever had any doubt of the 
general nature of the reception he would receive from him. 
He was especially qualified for bringing men together ; 
and though he had perhaps few qualities intense enough 
to command them, yet he had plenty of that kind of 
fascination which makes men think well of one another, 
which reconciles them to themselves, which tosses temper 
to the winds, and draws out of those with whom it is 
associated humors, fancies, and all those playful nothings, 
which, nothings as they are, have often more effect on our 
disposition than the heaviest substantialities. This docile 
and pliant nature naturally drew around him not only 
many persons but many characters. Indeed there is 
scarcely any single literary man of his generation with 
whom so many notable and celebrated men were connected ; 
and certainly no one with whom such a variety of opinion, 
taste, and creed were brought under one roof. Godwin, the 
advocate of an extravagant theory which he called Political 
Justice ; Holcroft, the free-thinking dramatist ; Thelwell, 
the violent defender of the French Revolution; Hazlitt, the 
heady and eloquent; Leigh Hunt, the editor of the Examiner, 
represented radical opinion of five different dimensions. 
Yet all proceeded to lengths that would have made the 
followers of Bright and Ernest Jones hesitate. Coleridge, 
South ey, and Wordsworth were in the opposite scale ; — 
they were earnest resisters of popular movements, and of 
concession to popular outcry ; — they were determined sup- 
porters of the English church ; — they all alike abhorred 
almost every principle, religious and political, which the 
five radicals we have selected professed. Then there was 



190 

Clarkson, the abolitionist, and Bernard Barton, Quakers ; 
Carey, an Anglican clergyman, and the translator of 
Dante j Talfourd, a barrister, and Unitarian \ Payne 
Collier; Manning, a University tutor; Barnes, the 
slashing editor of the Times; Sheridan Knowles, the 
dramatic poet ; Tom Hood ; Ainsworth, the novelist ; 
Liston, the comedian ; Baron Field, the judge ; and 
others, — representing almost every walk in life, as well as 
every shade of opinion. Yet all these men were the 
friends of Lamb. All held him in the highest respect, 
visited him, ate with him, and were happy to listen to his 
opinions on men and things. And here, where we find the 
Atheist with the Puritan ; the Barrister with the Come- 
dian ; the Quaker with the University don ; the Church 
of England priest with the Socialist, there was no other 
motive for such harmony among animals of a hostile 
nature, than the open conciliating character of the central 
figure. When we consider the men and the age, the 
wonder that such a group of inconsistences could be 
harmlessly assimilated increases tenfold. It was as if the 
hysena and the rabbit ; the lioness and the goat ; the tiger 
and the fawn were caged together. When these passionate 
natures were all slung, like beads round one neck, the 
hostility of party and sect was ten times more virulent 
than now. The anger which divided some of these celebrities 
from one another then, was such an anger as all the fury 
of the agitation and inflammatory eloquence of the last 
two years has been unable to arouse even in partisans. 
And all this heat was then glowing with its own fire. 
And sometimes this fire broke forth among the meeters in 



191 

Mitre Court, or Great Russell Street. But a timely pun, 
or lively uncovering of the humorous side of the dispute 
by Lamb, generally restored the balance, if it did not 
settle the debate. Holcroft, who was rampant in scepticism 
and everlasting in dispute, had one night got Coleridge 
over head and ears in the question : which is best — man 
as he is, or man as he is to be. Coleridge was soaring out 
of sight, and throwing as he went those magnificent fire- 
works, which often diverted the attention of the listener 
from the state of the argument. Holcroft, who had an 
extraordinary desire for definition and closeness, was 
unable or unwilling to follow the metaphysician in his 
sweeping wanderings, and wished to pin him close to 
common sense. Hazlitt was listening and saying nothing. 
The argument was getting angry \ when Lamb, who had 
allowed the combatants to fight up to the verge of despera- 
tion, quieted the question altogether by interposing, " I 
care neither for man as he is, nor man as he is to be, give 
me man as he is not to be." A laugh followed, and 
harmony was restored. 

Lamb has been reproached for being so passive under 
political fire ■ and Hazlitt, who felt nothing lukewarm 
where he felt at all, could not understand how any one, 
who sided with liberal opinions, could be dull and quiet 
when they were in danger, or forbear to strike right and 
left for proselytes. But Lamb, when he took a side, took 
it with the knowledge that there was a case for his antago- 
nists as well as himself. He admitted rights ; and though 
he might be confident, he did not blind himself to the 
contingency that confidence might be founded on imperfect 



192 

knowledge \ and he therefore regarded the question as one 
widely apart from the tie of friendship, and the recreations 
of social life. Indeed politics were to Lamb almost as 
abstract as metaphysics, and he would as soon think of 
scouting a man for not admitting the reality of objects, 
as for denying the rights of Protestants to Catholics. 
Sweclenborg's correspondences were quite as fit subjects, in 
Lamb's opinion, to grow angry over as reform in parlia- 
ment, or reform in law. Indeed we doubt whether he saw 
any real distinction in the value of the questions. There 
often met at Lamb's rooms half a dozen men, wmich the 
government of the day would have rather got rid of, than 
have won the Battle of Waterloo. Yet their energy was 
vaporing to Lamb, or warmed him to nothing but a 
brisker repartee, or funnier comparison. 

The anger and violence which political questions 
excited, was also a very great reason why Lamb had little 
sympathy with them. Whatever transported man out of 
the region of common sense, and turned his passions loose 
among his reason, was distasteful to Lamb. , He denied 
the philosophies of selfishness. He had a constitutional 
dislike for all kinds of passion, and was opposed in a great 
measure, to sentiment of any kind. He never allowed 
himself to be carried away by his feelings. When they 
were getting the better of him, he calmly argued them 
back into experience. The heart had its full measure of 
authority in Lamb, but it was always kept to that measure ; 
it never intruded on the province of the understanding. 
There was nothing of Sterne about him. Indeed, although 
we could scarcely think of two natures more unlike than 



193 

those of Swift and Lamb ; yet, we think, Lamb would 
more easily have been turned into Swift, than into Sterne. 
An assumed character was far more averse from his nature 
than a natural character, though that character might be 
-composed of hate, malignity, disgust, envy, and wretched- 
ness. If any thing could have moved a mind, apathetic 
to affairs in general, to take a side, and become determined, 
it would have been such events as were stirring in the year 
1800. The Italian campaign of Buonaparte was in every 
body's mouth ; old soldiers hardly believed in its reality ; 
and minds, that crave wonder, were almost paralyzed by 
their own chosen food. This astonishing military success 
was then being followed by another, that threatened 
England herself. The soldier, who by a kind of enchant- 
ment, had leaped the Alps, taken his foe in the rear, and 
swept Lombardy of Austrians, from the Gulf of Yenice 
to the Gulf of Genoa, w^as now crossing the Mediterranean 
to intercept us on the way to India, and grasp the key of 
our noblest colony. Lamb was a clerk, whose interests 
were bound up with the interests of this colony. Yet, at 
the very time when Buonaparte had already landed, and 
had called upon the Pyramids to behold the victories of 
his army, Lamb says that " Public affairs — except as they 
touch upon me and so turn into private — I cannot whip 
up my mind to feel any interest in. . . I cannot make 
these present times present to me. I read histories of the 
past and live in them." Yet we seem now to think that 
the doings of that period, which Lamb treats so quietly, 
were thunder and lightinng to the gloomy twilight and 
monotonous murmurs among which he delighted to pore, 

o 



194 

But this passage illustrates the texture of his mind. It 
did not like to grapple and wrestle with any thing. It 
was not eager for food seasoned with strong condiments. 
It avoided the present, in order to be free from its savage 
reality. It liked events from which the fangs had been 
drawn, and in which the poison bags were dried up. 
Lamb did not wish fco be harrowed through any of his 
faculties except his imagination. It was this peculiarity 
which made him exclaim so eloquently against Lear on the 
stage. The Lear that he saw was incorporeal, and when- 
ever it was attempted to make a real Lear of simulated 
feelings he was shocked. He had no delight in morbid 
taste of any kind. And, indeed, it was the very fineness 
of the quality of his mind, its ready reply to the merest 
touch, which thus led its possessor to shrink from agitation 
and passion. Where there is a dull understanding, and 
the intellectual powers are cold and feeble, it requires all 
the force of real events to stir up their lazy interests. 
That which is agony and a scalding of the brain to a 
sensitive mind, is only an agreeable pulsation to men in 
general. That which will prostrate a delicate organization, 
will only hasten the movement of the gross and heavy 
into healthy action. It was as characteristic of Goethe as 
of Lamb to avoid the political world around him. "When 
Buonaparte overran the little state in which he dwelt, 
Goethe retired to his library, and studied Arabic. His 
German contemporaries, fuming with frenzy and tobacco, 
called him base, and the betrayer of his country. He knew 
them as well as he knew himself, and permitted them to 
relieve their excitement with windy words. The political 



195 

fever would have upset his mind, without moderating 
any of the disasters which were taking place. The 
delicacy of his intellect was so fine, that it was not only 
unequal to act the demagogue, and harangue ignorance on 
the side of its prejudices ; but it could never bear to 
read of the murders and accidents of the day. Goethe 
studiously avoided all sensational narratives, whether real 
or unreal. Like Lamb, he found all the excitement he could 
bear in the past. These instances show that, it is not so 
much an act of the judgment, when a sensitive being 
refuses to suffer the interests of the day to carry him 
onward, as an act of self-preservation. He satisfies him- 
self with events in which the passions are dried up, 
because his organization is too delicate to digest them in 
their coarse and raw condition. 

It was, perhaps, a mere change of external appearance, 
in the same intellectual peculiarity, that made Lamb's 
mind seem, to common observers, an irreligious one ; — 
that is, a mind that renounced all the forms and observances 
which are recognized as the ' outward and visible sign of 
an inward and spiritual grace.' It would be absurd to 
claim any thing like Methodism, or Calvinism, or even 
Anglicanism for Lamb. He neither went to church or 
chapel, or cherished in himself any principle that restricted 
the free play of his ideas. Indeed he was so entirely 
under the control of unrestrained feelings, that he never 
overcame the impulsiveness of a child in some things. 
In a letter to Southey, he says, "I am going to stand 
godfather ; I don't like the business ; I cannot muster up 
decorum for these occasions ; I shall certainly disgrace the 



196 

font; I was at Hazlitt's marriage, and was like to have 
been turned out several times during the ceremony. Any 
thing awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a 
funeral. Yet I can read about these ceremonies with 
pious and proper feelings. The realities of life only seem 
mockeries." Nine persons out of ten would consider such 
behaviour as Lamb here recounts of himself, as a sign of 
an utter deadness to all religious feeling. They would 
denounce the man who owned to it, as very far sunk in 
depravity. There is no part of our conduct which we 
hold so stiffly to a fixed and ceremonious uniformity, as 
our behaviour in connection with religious duties. It is 
even uncharitably construed against a child, when it does 
not behave with due respect in the house of prayer. No one 
can say that these rigours are improper, that it would be 
tolerable to allow the same license in the chapel as in the 
theatre, or to look on the ceremonies of the altar with the 
same thoughtlessness as we look on a panorama. Yet a 
casual observer would, in the case of Lamb ; confound the 
two, and affirm that he had no more respect for a religious 
duty, than he had for a raree show ; — that the acting of 
Munden was as serious a matter to him as the fate of the 
soul. But we see how, in this instance, that intellectual 
formation, which might be called a virtue when it was 
brought in contact with politics, assumed all the outward 
show of a vice, when it touched religion. It was not the 
absence of religion from his nature, but the incapacity to 
act a part where religion becomes an outward and visible 
sign. However unlike those ideas which we call religious 
may be hung together in different persons, there can be no 



197 

great difference on the solemnity of death. This is really 
the great apostle that brings the same creed to the convic- 
tions of all. There we all rally and nnite together. Yet 
a funeral was to Lamb the same source of unceremonious- 
ness as a wedding. There was in his mind such a filmy 
partition between its chambers, that the sublime and the 
ridiculous, always, as the proverb tells us, near neighbors, 
were often actual companions with Lamb. He who had 
tasted the bitterest concoction of the cup of life, was, 
perhaps, kindly saved from its severest punishment by the 
very levity, which ^took sadness out of sad things, and 
smiled when others were weeping. It was on one of these 
occasions, or on an occasion of some unseasonable license, 
that one of his correspondents appears to have remonstra- 
ted with him. Lamb replies, " Do not rashly infer from 
some slight and light expressions, which I may have made 
use of in a moment of levity, . . . that I am an 
inveterate enemy of all religion. I have had a time of 
seriousness, and I have known the importance and reality 
of a religious belief. Latterly much of my seriousness 
has gone off, whether from new company, or some other 
associations, but I still retain at bottom a conviction of 
the truth, and certainly of the usefulness of religion." 
Many of the companions that assembled at Lamb's were 
unbelievers, who exulted in their separation from the 
generality of their race. But Lamb drew back as coldly 
from discussion, when it began to meddle with religion, as 
he did when it began to be political. He had the same 
kind of distaste for one as the other, and both seemed to 
touch painfully on the same intellectual nerve, and he 



198 

often put both out of sight by the same means. A levity 
was as artfully applied to religious as to political disputants. 

It is hardly possible to obtain a notion of men as they 
really were. Indeed we scarcely hazard anything when we 
say that no one has yet ever been represented otherwise 
than in some degree as a fictitious character, inasmuch as 
the impression that is received by the man himself can 
never be transmitted by words. The most minute portraits 
on]y approach the originals in different degrees. Johnson, 
in the pages of Boswell, is a character strongly and happily 
drawn. But Boswell, with all his industry directed to 
one object, has only given us a resemblance a little closer 
to the original than usual. The man Johnson, and the 
Bosweilized Johnson, were individuals, with only some 
features in common. Nature works with tools too perfect 
and delicate to be imitated with such coarse specimens as 
the occasional words and doings of her subject. It is only 
the man himself that can be his own interpreter. Hence 
we perhaps know more of Montaigne than of any man 
that ever lived, excepting ourselves. Montaigne is the 
only man that has not been ashamed of his nature, and 
has dared to reveal himself in all his variableness and 
turning. 

Some of Lamb's biographers and friends have said 
that the sole blot on his character was the propensity to 
drink. Either unfortunately or fortunately ; for it would 
be difficult to determine the matter, Lamb could only take 
a very small quantity of intoxicating drink before it began 
to show a decided effect on him. His favorites were gin 
and porter,— beverages which have shared remarkably in 



199 

the rises and falls of London life. But a quantity of 

either, which would only rouse the latent action of common 

minds, took the reason out of Lamb. Yet, while he kept 

himself in the bounds which his weak digestion prescribed, 

the liquor improved his wit, developed his wisdom, and 

animated all around him with his subtle exhibition of the 

pleasant side of things. We are told that he generally 

knew when to stop, and his sister had a very beneficial 

influence over him at such times as he was inclined to 

transgress. Yet the cup often overflowed, and his strong 

sense of folly poured its rebuke upon him. in the most 

acute forms afterwards. He made efforts now and then 

to deny himself altogether and live by theory. This, 

however, did not answer. His constitution, that refused to 

be over indulged without revenge, was impatient at no 

indulgence. He required stimulus to give freedom and 

ease to his thoughts. While he was over temperate, he 

was over moody. The mind brooded. The moderate 

inconveniences of life expanded into persecutions and 

misfortunes. Whereas a draught or two of porter would 

* ' Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff. 
That weighed upon the heart." 

Patmore, one of the later of Lamb's friends, who has 

written with great good sense and penetration on him, 

says, "I have no recollection of any Table Talk which has 

left such delightful impressions on my mind, as that which 

has taken place between the first and last glass of humble 

gin and water, after a rump steak or pork chop supper, in 

the simple little domicile of Chas. Lamb and his sister, at 

Enfield Chase." In Lamb's humorous account of himself, 



200 

which he gave to Mr. Upcot, he confesses that he Is "a 
small eater but not drinker, confesses a partiality for the 
production of the juniper berry, was a fierce smoker of 
tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, 
emitting only now and then a casual puff," 

One of Lamb's Essays is entitled the Confessions of a 
Drunkard. This Essay presents a fearful picture of the 
effects of drink, and it was used against its author as a 
real experience, by the writers in the Quarterly Review 
and other publications, which took the Quarterly side in 
politics, and imitated it in malignity. But this accusation 
was on a par with most other political accusations of that 
day. There was only a brick of truth on whiclTto build a 
whole edifice of slander. It was. Lamb's failing sometimes, 
as we said, to overpass the line of prudence ; but generally 
he only obeyed what- in his case was the necessity of his 
nature. "Now you are not going to drink any ale, 
Charles," was Miss Lamb's parting salutation; when, as it 
frequently happened, he accompanied one of his visitors 
on his way back to London. " No, no/' would be his half 
impatient reply; but along walk, a wayside ale-house, and 
the prospect of a chatty half hour, were temptations that 
overcame all philosophy on the point, and a foaming cup 
of porter was soon produced in defiance of the half-extorted 
promise. But Lamb had read Thomas Aquinas, and he 
could ease his conscience in scholastic fashion, by declaring 
that porter is not ale. When the walk was renewed, 
Lamb reached his highest point of intellectual communica- 
tion. He stammered out wisdom in Cap and Bells, — he 
became full of matter, — indeed often so brilliant in expo- 



201 

sition and analysis, that Patmore doubts whether we have 
received anything equal to the full richness of his mind ; 
whether what we possess can be likened to anything but 
the spillings and waste of his intellect. This is, perhaps, 
over stated. That which is unequalled in its way, cannot 
be looked on as an unworthy representative of any mind, 
"We doubt, indeed, whether the same thing has not been 
said of most men of genius, from Burns to Pascal. 

There was that in Lamb which was seen very imper- 
fectly in most of his friends and contemporaries. Even 
the most celebrated of those who used to assemble around 
him occasionally, and especially on his Wednesday evenings, 
possessed but a very imperfect, or very rude knowledge of 
human nature. Hazlitt looked on it as a serpent, that 
was only gradually ridding itself of its slough. Coleridge 
viewed it as a kind of oriental jin, prone to exercising its 
vast powers to the detriment of those subject to it ; but 
capable of generosities and sympathies of an exalted kind. 
Hunt viewed it as a mule loaded with ingots, with a 
mixture of patience, that bore oppression to any extent, 
and stubbornness, that almost defied bit and bridle. 
Talfourd looked on men as a manager views a well filled 
theatre. He had little or no resentment for the vice and 
profligacy that was packed ready to applaud and enjoy the 
farce, which he had provided for it. Wordsworth looked 
upon them as sheep intermixed with wolves and foxes ? 
over whom the pastoral eye and staff were constantly 
needed. Southey viewed them as a half breed of angel 
and demon, the demon sometimes overpowering the angel, 
and the angel occasionallv subduing the demon. Godwin 



202 

looked upon a man as a fallen spirit, with all the spiritual 
qualities still existent, which it only required an intelligent 
training to restore again to life. George Dyer believed 
the fool, the knave, the charletan as implicitly as he did 
the philosopher or the divine. Lamb had none of these 
predilections. He had no strongly defined singularity to 
refer all his impressions to. He had no standard. The 
infinite differences of mankind sprung from so many 
casual circumstances, that in them alone class, section, and 
all that would generalize, came to nothing. Strict limita- 
tion was sure to expire in absurdity, and be continually 
waging its dogmas against itself. And this conclusion was 
the result of a thorough taste for the study of mankind, a 
thorough delight in tracing, as far as possible, the windings 
and obliquities of feeling and peculiarity. It was the bent 
of Lamb's mind for this study which directed his reading 
to those writers, who have applied their powers almost 
exclusively to the representation of human activity and 
variation. He found in their pages those fine portraits of 
men, that gave him a distaste for more artificial reading, 
and gave a kindred direction to his inclinations. From 
the pages of the old dramatists, he went directly to real 
men and women, compared the writing with the reality, 
and thus sorted and proved his knowledge. In this 
manner he combined his observation into almost a code, in 
which he separated the commonplace from the peculiar ; 
and, rejecting the former as waste, he directed his atten- 
tion especially to the latter. He had a group of these as 
his friends, and they always roused his nature, and set his 
intellect in motion. But, as they one by one departed, we 



I 



203 

see what gaps they made in his enjoyment, how the 
world kept darkening as its windows disappeared, with 
almost as fearful anticipations as those that crept over the 
prisoner in the dungeon, whose walls advanced to crush 
him. " Deaths overset one," he writes to "Wordsworth, 
" and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or 
three have died within this last two twelvemonths, and so 
many parts of me have been numbed. . . . There's 
Captain Burney gone ! What fun has whist now, what 
matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him 
looking over you % One never hears anything, but the 
image of the particular person occurs with whom alone 
almost you would care to share the intelligence, — thus one 
distributes oneself about — and now for so many parts of 
me I have lost the market. Common natures do not 
suffice me. Good people, as they are called, wont serve. 
I want individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I 
want so many answering needles. The going away of 
friends does not make the remainder more precious." 
Men, in whose study that of man has had a principal share, 
have always had somewhat of the taste of Lamb. They 
have always been interested in individuals to the neglect 
of groups. Shakspere studied groups as well as indi- 
viduals ; and, by transferring what was general from the 
groups, and mixing it with what was peculiar in the 
individuals, he was able, even when drawing characters 
of the most singular and eccentric nature, to make them 
our familiars, our brothers, our friends, by the common 
instincts which he has mixed with the uncommon pecu- 
liarities.. But this universality is given to few. Even 



204 

refined and celebrated observers of men are obliged to be 
satisfied with individuals ; and, for want of a philosophic 
as well as a characteristic penetration, to amuse us with 
Oldbucks, Uncle Tobies, Jourdains, and De Coverleys. 
Lamb belongs to this class. He had a keen appreciation 
of any departure from the commonplace. He liked eccen- 
trics. He sported with weakness in the same way as we 
sport with a child • — we love it for its very weakness, and 
know that that weakness may grow up into the wisdom of 
Plato. George Dyer, Captain Burney, Hazlitt, Leigh 
Hunt, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey were all mapped 
in Lamb's mind with their outlines as perfectly unlike as 
their visages. The commonplace had been purged out of 
all these. They were in the crowd, but not of it. They 
belonged to one another only in their outward forms, and 
might for all that have no more consent than fire has with 
ice, or trouble with laughter. Yet there were touches of 
nature that would have made Hazlitt grasp the hand of 
Southey, and Coleridge agree with Leigh Hunt. Lamb, 
when he stood among these opposite individualities as 
their rallying point, showed that his sympathies were large 
and manly, and that he understood human nature, though 
he understood it unconsciously and by instinct. Had he 
been able to give adequate expression to his feelings, — 
had he been able to refer them back to their source, and 
give their peculiarities their proper speech, and describe 
their course of action by finely connected side reflection, 
he would have done, on some scale or other, what Shakspere 
has done on the broadest field. But here came the diffi- 
culty. He could unite himself to the individuals, but he 



205 

never attempted to describe how that unity was accom- 
plished He was satisfied with the notion of the individuals, 
and while he was a centre round which they moved, he 
was content to believe in them, and read them as men as 
wide apart as their disinclinations fixed them. 

But this respect and love for the individualities of men, 
freed Lamb's mind from contracted principles — left him with 
sympathy for opposite political parties, for opposite creeds, 
for any vagary which men might commit on the stage of 
their institutions, or on the stage of their principles. He 
saw the man in every weakness and folly, and the weak- 
ness or the folly rather endeared the man to him, than 
drove him away from him. Weakness and folly stamped 
if not peculiarity yet individuality on what, without it, 
would have been mere plodding routine, the same thing 
over again, which was the source of Lamb's indifference. 
There appears to be no knowledge which we can aim at, 
that comes so reluctantly to us as this knowledge of man- 
kind i which, on a partial view, seems to be always at our 
side, instructing us, and working into us. We almost 
believe that it comes as readily as our speech, and it is 
nearly as much a part of our growth as a member of the 
body. Yet the majority of men are hardly instructed in 
its elements. The want of it is the source of persecution, 
and pride, and vainglory, and those annoying passions 
which men, ignorant of men, display in all their trans- 
actions with them. Had Gifford understood such a nature 
as that of Hazlitt, he would never have slandered it ; and 
had Hazlitt understood Southey, he would never have 
hurled his tomahawk at him : and had Southev understood 



206 

Hunt, he would have dipped his pen in milk instead of 
gall. It was because Lamb knew all these, that he became 
beloved by all; and, while he never intruded on those parts 
of character which his knowledge showed were the vanities, 
and the weakness, and accidents of the men, he sported 
freely on whatever was common and affectionate between 
them. 

When he left his own friends and went abroad, it 
was the same. The largeness of his humanity made 
everything, that obeyed the wearisome slavery of fashion 
and formality, a bore to him. He had no sympathy with 
those voluntary weak-minded obligations, which prescribe 
the manner in which you should enter a room and leave it ; 
the law of sitting at table ; and even of eating, drinking, 
and smoking. This was dull-minded slavery to Lamb. 
He never willingly mixed with company where its rules 
were observed, and he cast the large class of persons, 
whose sole interests in life consists in such melancholy 
conformity, among the waste and unsuggestive parts of 
human nature. But when he escaped from these classes, 
he was all life again. He found in the streets a constant 
supply of living interests. The beggar, the sweep, the 
blind, the lame, the Quaker, the Jew — whatever was out 
of the pale of middle class constraints, or w r as singular, 
were everlasting pages of instruction to him. In one of 
his essays he laments the decay of beggars. In another, 
in praise of chimney sweepers, he says, "I reverence these 
young Africans of our own growth — these almost clergy 
imps, who sport their cloth without assumption." He 
could not be easy among the uniformities and insincerities 



207 

of fashion. But when he got among natural men— men 
who had no cause to conceal themselves in themselves, but 
who were accustomed to act and speak without check or 
balance, he was free and easy. Hence he could always 
find entertainment in low society, and one of bis friends 
says that low society was necessary to him. It afforded 
a balance which the peculiarity of his mind required. He 
knew that man is only contemptible when he tries to be 
something different from what circumstances have made 
him. Where he has no temptations to put on airs and 
assume superiorities, he becomes the most instructive 
creature in nature. When he acts as a superior being, he 
becomes a mere variation of an animal, constantly making 
mistakes, and can only be classed with dancing dogs and 
fortune-telling ponies. 

Lamb's friend, Mr. Patmore, has stated tlmt "He 
was a gentle, amiable, and tender-hearted misanthrope — ■ 
he hated men in his judgment; but yearned towards them 
in his heart." We may often try the value of a proposition 
by reversing it. Suppose he had loved them in his judg- 
ment, and hated them in his heart. The case stated by 
Mr. Patmore might have been stated of Felix Neff and 
John Howard. But the reverse might be stated of 
Dominic the Inquisitor, and Philip the Second. To 
hate men in your judgment is only to be conscious that 
they are largely compounded of those materials, which it 
is our very nature to hate, — which we are commanded to 
hate in ourselves, — which we see constantly working out 
in the world a quantity of results, which we know are 
detrimental to all that is valuable in our lives here, and 



208 

our hopes hereafter. If our judgment did not hate these 
things, we should be advocating a philosophy, viler than 
was ever proposed among the grossest of the heathens. 
"We should be again making gods of pride, vanity, lust, 
lying, and stealing. These are elements rooted in our 
nature, which it is the province of religion to purge, 
correct, and humble ; and we must hate them in our judg- 
ment, before the action of religion has any chance of 
touching them to their detriment. If, therefore, it be said 
that Lamb hated men in his judgment, and yearned 
towards them in his heart ; the proposition only states 
that he hated the evil part of man, and loved the good. — 
He yearned towards them in his heart, because he saw 
that the hated part of them, which his judgment rejected, 
was less the fault of men than their misfortune,— that it 
was born with them, — that they had no more control over 
its presence than they had over the measles or the hooping 
cough, and that they were not only worthy of pity and 
help in every situation where the pity and help of one 
would be of benefit to another ■ — -but that this yearning of 
the heart, — this pity and help, are not permitted to us as 
a taste ; but commanded by the weakness of our nature, 
as a duty. Lamb's misanthropy was, on this view of it, 
only Christianity, — only the duty of a good citizen, and a 
good man. 

Lamb's literary taste was peculiar. Like most other 
points in his character, it seemed to derive little of its 
nature from others. It had grown up in a great measure 
independently, and levied little or nothing from the 
intercourse of friends, or the current reading of the day. 



309 

Lamb started with Coleridge \ but the friends soon separa- 
ted, and took widely different routes. Coleridge lost 
himself in the mazes of theology and German philosophy; 
Lamb never advanced a step among either. Though he 
had such reverence for Coleridge, and followed him alone 
among all his acquaintances ; yet, in every particular of 
their works, Lamb has shown himself entirely disconnected 
from the taste or manner of his friend. Coleridge was 
always exceedingly decorative ; — even his philosophy was 
not satisfied with its tub, but strained after dainty appli- 
ances. Lamb, on the contrary, detested ornament except 
it were useful, — he never put on a superfluous jewel, or 
sought to color what was naturally colorless. Hence he 
had little or no sympathy with the modern school of 
poetry, though he had studied in the same school as 
Coleridge, and Coleridge had given it one of its most 
impulsive thrusts. To Christabel we owe something more 
than the form of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the Siege 
of Corinth, and Paradise and the Peri. Byron was to 
him rhodomontade. "He is great" he writes in a letter 
to Cottle, "in so little a way. To be a poet is to be a 
man, not a petty portion of $ occasional low passions, 
worked up into a permanent form of humanity. Shakspere 
has thrust such rubbishly feelings into a corner — the dusky 
heart of Don John in Much Ado." This censure, with a 
modicum of truth, has something that looks like prejudice. 
For, when we see with what delicacy and exquisite fitness 
Lamb uses language, how sensitive he is to the finest 
shades that letters can express, we are the more surprised 
that, he should not have acknowledged that kindred excei- 

p 



210 

lence in Byron, who often gives language the nature of a 
pigment, and puts clown the idea with shade and color. 
His colors indeed are startling, and his shades as violent 
as those of Rembrandt ; and these circumstances may have 
been banes to Lamb's pensive taste, which was never 
eruptive, never explosive or violent. 

It is not surprising that Shelley, — the Delphi of 
the modern poets, — should have been rejected by Lamb. 
" I can no more understand Shelley than you can." he 
writes to Bernard Barton, " His poetry is thin sown with 
profit or delight. . . For his theories or nostrums they 
are oracular enough, but I either comprehend 'em not, or 
there is miching malice and mischief in 'em, but for the 
most part ringing with their own emptiness." And yet 
Shelley is but the highest development of the system 
inaugurated by Wordsworth. — The abandonment of man- 
kind, as the worthiest subject of verse, and the substitution 
of nature in his stead, was the first principle of Wordsworth ; 
and this principle Shelley only extended to the confines of 
the possible. He exalted nature into a goddess, and 
worshipped her in mysterious and indefinite language, the 
only vehicle that can be applied to objects, whose outlines 
must be composed of things seen, without being con- 
founded with them. Though Lamb, therefore, recognised 
Wordsworth as a true poet of nature, he Avas not prepared 
to follow out his principles to their appointed end. In 
Wordsworth, nature was always the world seen and felt ; 
in Shelley it became not only the world seen and felt ; 
but the world remodelled and conceived. Lamb stopped 
where his senses stopped. He did not conceive that the 



211 

imagination had the right to alter, re-clothe, and re-enibel- 
Ksh what was already perfect. Wordsworth himself shrunk 
from this extension of his poetical theory. But, having 
abandoned society and life, he had abandoned all the 
wholesome restrictions, which keep extravagance within 
bounds ; and, though he never transgressed the limits of 
the true himself, he was no security for his followers ; 
and we see that the first one of ability drove headlong 
forward, and substituted mere vapor and vision for the 
mountains, woods, fields, and tarns over which the master 
was wont to expatiate. 

Lamb also read Southey • but it is doubtful whether 
he would have ever looked at Thalaba or Kehama had not 
their author been his friend. Southey's style was so far 
removed from that which Lamb thought excellent, that 
we hazard little in saving that, he had no real sympathy 
with Southey's theoretic poetry. Indeed he told Southey 
himself as much. Referring to the Curse of Kehama, he 
says, "My imagination goes sinking and floundering in the 
vast spaces of unopened before systems and faiths ■ I am put 
out of the pale of my sympathies, my moral sense is almost 
outraged ; I can't believe, or, with horror am made to believe, 
such desperate chances against omnipotences, such disturb- 
ances of faith to the centre. . . I mention only what 
diminishes my delight at the wonder-workings of Kehama. 
. . I am at home in Spain and Christendom. I have a timid 
imagination ; I am afraid I do not willingly admit of strange 
beliefs, or out of the way creeds or places. I never read 
books of travels, at least not farther than Paris or Rome." 
Here he gives us a key to one important feature in his 



212 

character, — its conservative principle. Whatever had 
lived long, or whatever had been associated with his early 
life, had received a sort of consecration. It was henceforth 
irremoveable from its place. London, and his favorite 
spot in London ; the universities, old plays, old poems, 
old prose were things he clung to, and never abandoned. 
Southey's irregular ode-style, with its awful mythology, 
were things that innovated too much on his ideas of what 
poetry should be, and how it ought to deport itself. 

History he hardly classed among intellectual reading. 
He put Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Josephus, Paley among 
the books that he could not read, and confounded them in 
the same catalogue with court calendars, directories, 
almanacs, science, and statutes at large. With these 
exceptions, he professed that he could read almost anything. 
But his taste inclined him especially to the old poets and 
dramatists. And of these he did not cling so closely to 
the well-known as to the half -known, or almost unknown. 
To be neglected was to have a title to Lamb's regard, and 
he was especially pleased to take a ragged vagabond book 
by the hand, and hear it discourse by his winter fire. 
Neglect, whether in human beings or in literature, had 
especial claims on him. Shakspere and Milton he held as 
we are all more or less obliged to hold them ; but he had 
a more friendly sympathy, as he confesses, for Kit Marlowe, 
Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. Those 
he could read with the kind of feeling, which none of us is 
without ; the feeling that our reading is not such as every 
body else has read; that we are in some measure on ground, 
which has not yet had all its game chased out of it ; that 



213 

we may pick up thoughts as they came freshly to serve 
the desires of a society long since dead ; that we are in 
fields, which have been neglected, not for want of grain, 
but because the idle generation of common readers dares 
only venture where every part has been explored before- 
hand, and every profitable corner well known. 

Lamb's taste for these half-known or unknown 
authors, was certainly an advantage to him. He stored 
up all their singularities, their humors, and obsolete 
methods of expressing themselves. His taste directed him 
how to make a skilful use of these studies, and they 
greatly enlarged the scope and liveliness, and vigor of his 
writing. The old and the new are so happily blended in 
his best essays, that the old never seems a patch on the 
garment. 

In prose writers, Lamb had a library of favorites \ 
but all were individuals, — all had some singular character, 
that set them off in distinguishing points from their 
brethren. Quarles and Wither, the emblem makers; 
Burton, with his rambling learning and credulous anec- 
dotes; Isaac Walton, stretching himself by brook-sides, 
and making even his cruel amusement attractive ; Sir 
Thomas Browne, gleaming with a style lighted up like a 
funeral chamber with wax tapers, glowing from silver 
sconces on black drapery \ Thomas Fuller, slyly laughing 
at the knacks and humors of men, and exhibiting them in 
a queer, uncommon phrase, or lively sally; Jeremy Taylor, 
speaking as it were from two worlds, and translating the 
language of heaven into that of mortals, were among his 
chief delights, when the fire was clear, the candles were on 



214 

the table, the rain was pouring without, and the unseason- 
able night gave no indication of visitors. Then he revelled 
in his old folios, lived over again past ages, consorted with 
every out of date fashion and feeling, and enjoyed one of 
the purest and rarest pleasures bestowed on mortals. There 
were others, however, stranger still to the general run of 
readers, which were dear to Lamb. It seemed almost a 
vagary to rate the Life of the Duke of Newcastle by his 
Duchess so highly as Lamb did. " No casket is rich 
enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep 
safe such a jewel." are the words in which he has embalmed 
his estimation of a work, which, to most readers, would 
seem flat and commonplace. He had scarcely less regard 
for the plays, poems, discourses, and other tame effusions 
of the Duchess and her husband, which fill nearly a dozen 
volumes. John Buncle, the 'healthy' book that so puzzled 
the Scotchman ; Sir Philip Sydney, wearying common 
readers with the prolixities of his Arcadia ; Charles 
Cotton, and Andrew Marvel were also among the books 
which he exchanged for the Biographies, Discourses, 
Sermons, and Treatises, which were constantly poured 
into his hands from the modern press. It was the same 
with fiction. Though he lived in what might be termed 
the golden age of fiction ; when it was abundant and rich, 
without being small, overflowing, wearisome, and immoral 
as it has now become ; yet he scarcely ever dipped into a 
modern novel. Even the Waverley Novels enjoyed but a 
questionable reputation with Lamb. He had far more 
pleasure in the pages of De Foe, Speaking of his novels, 
he says, " In the appearance of truth, in all the incidents 



215 

and conversations that occur in them, they exceed any 
works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illu- 
sion. The author never appears in these self narratives 
(for so they ought to be called, or rather auto-biographies), 
but the narrator chains us down to an implicit belief in 
every thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a 
log-book in it. . . It is like reading evidence given in a 
court of justice." Smollett's novels, also, expanding into a 
vigorous narrative that never stops to run into detail, till 
you yawn over it ; but hurries on from incident to inci- 
dent, as if the author's only anxiety was to get rid of the 
heavy burden of his ideas, was the kind of dense reading 
which was to Lamb the end of a book, and especially of a 
novel. Fielding and Richardson also were as much re- 
garded as Smollett. Lamb did not believe that a character 
had been clearly and boldly drawn in fiction since Parson 
Adams, Lov r elace, Strap, and Corporal Trim had been left 
by their great describers, and had lifted our fiction to the 
same rank as Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Rabelais, with 
an additional originality, all its own. 

We must not forget to notice Lamb's classical taste. 
His Christ Church training never left him. He always 
retained his classical knowledge, and he loved to use it. 
He wrote Latin letters to those correspondents who were 
likely to understand them, and he sometimes indulged in 
turning queer proverbs and nursery distiches into Latin. 
In almost every one of his essays, and in many of his 
letters, classical allusions are constantly reminding the 
reader that the author is at home in the stateliest retreats 
of Roman thought. But the exquisite taste of the 



21G 

writer kept him from the fussy conceit of tlie pedant. He 
never introduced a word of Latin to show the world the 
extent of his knowledge of the language. Whenever a 
bit of dead language, or a classical allusion is introduced 
by Lamb, it comes because nothing else could so well have 
borne the burden of the idea ; from no other source could 
he have so aptly told his meaning. This is true learning, 
and true taste. 

Here we conclude. Our remarks have extended to a 
greater length than we intended ; but they are not more 
extensive than the interesting subject of them deserves. 



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